Low-cost, easy to use audio and web conferencing blog

So Auld Langs Syne has been sung and we’re being welcomed back to work with a 6% increase in rail fares! Great

What on earth are they playing at? The economy is on its knees with the worst FTSE figures since records began so they decide to significantly increase the costs of most businesses who are doing their bit for the environment by travelling by rail.

I don’t get it. Why?

Throughout 2009 we’ll be working hard to help you reduce your costs by meeting via phone and web. Our OzoneLITE service is FREE so we can’t reduce prices there much but look out for some great new deals on our OzoneENTERPRISE services from us over the next few months.

Happy new year from all at Ozone Conferencing.

What’s your elevator pitch? By this I mean the phrase you trot out when someone asks you what you do at a party or networking event.

Here’s mine and why the response almost always raises my blood pressure.

You: “Hi Pete, so what does Ozone do?”

Me: “We provide low-cost audio and web conferencing services which allow you to meet and work with anyone, anywhere in the world, instantly - without the need to travel”

I know what’s coming next and I try not to grit my teeth by counting slowly from one to three. Here it comes…

You: “Wow, great, that’s interesting. We tried VIDEO CONFERENCING once but it never worked very well/was too expensive/didn’t like it …etc”

ARRGGH! - We don’t do VIDEO conferencing, we do WEB conferencing!! BIG DIFFERENCE…

…as I’ll explain in a minute.

Actually, it always makes me laugh (when the blood pressure has gone down). It would be like you saying “I build sailing dinghies“ and me saying “Wow, great. I tried to fly the space shuttle once but there were too many buttons”.

Video conferences and web conferences are different animals. Here’s why.

It sounds obvious but to hold a video conference, all parties need to have at least a video camera, a high speed internet connection and some additional fancy hardware and software. Oh, and deep pockets.

By contrast, to hold a web conference all you need is a standard phone (land line or mobile), an Internet connection (even a dial up or ropey wireless one will do!) and a browser. A pocket of loose change buys you a lot of web conferencing.

You can’t see each other which means that you don’t need any special equipment (and no one can see you’re still in your pajamas) but you CAN see what you need to see - what’s on the other party’s screen.

We don’t do VIDEO conferencing because for most people it’s a bad experience which puts them off the idea of virtual meetings. Web conferencing is *much* cheaper, needs no special equipment and just works which means web conferences soon become regular events.

If you’ve never experienced a web conference, It’s quite hard to explain how simple they are so here’s a clip of a recent one I gave as part of Hampshire’s Smart Commute week initiative.

Click here to view web conference

(Video opens in a new window, please ensure popups are enabled)

For a more detailed comparison of video conferencing and web conferencing including the advantages and disadvantages of both click link below.

Advantages and disadvanages of video and web conferencing

Ozone Conferencing were proud to eHampshire’s Smart Commute Week by hosting daily webcasts using our OzoneENTERPRISE audio and web conferencing services.

The webcasts, introduced by eHampshire’s Teleworking (Matisse) Project Manager Tony Corbin, are available as streaming videos.

We’ll be exhibiting at the Government IT exhibition on 31st January at the QEII conference centre in Westminster.

 If you can spare the time, why not pop down and meet us in person. You could win a bottle of very expensive Champagne and we’ve booked a professional exhibition to prove that if you play your cards right, you could save a stack of cash by moving over to Ozone. We’ll even give you a pack of Ozone playing cards to take home. Hope to see you there.

Over the last few weeks, London has been disrupted by underground strikes. We are angry that people who seem to be living in the last century feel justified in selfishly inflicting pain on London businesses.

Last week we put up a response page at…

www.OzoneConferencing.com/enterprise/tube.html 

…and have had a good response with plenty of calls of support.

Perhaps some see this as blatant opportunism but just as the popularity of the fax machine in the UK was the result of exasperation at postal strikes, maybe the RMT action will make people think twice about the need to travel.

This week the UK has been hit by flash floods and, as I write, the country is still under threat with the Met Office issuing severe weather warnings to 18 areas.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to remind you that if you can’t travel to business meetings because of the floods and want a simple, cheap and instant way to meet colleagues (or just keep in touch with family), then our OzoneLITE service may be just want you are looking for.

You can sign up instantly online and all you pay for is the cost of the phone call at 5p per min.

Hope this helps.

Ever wondered why lawyers charge so much money? Maybe there are some clues below.

I had a bizarre conversation with a firm of lawyers yesterday who wanted to use our OzoneLITE free (except for the cost of a phone call) audio conferencing service. They signed up for their free account, ran a test call and loved the service. So far so good but here’s where it all gets a bit strange.

They called up wanting to open ‘a proper OzoneLITE account’ which they wanted to pay for. When I told them that the service was free and therefore they can just continue to use it without paying anything I was expecting an exclamation of joy. It didn’t happen.

Apparently their company policy is not to use free services. Although they’d really like to continue to use OzoneLITE unless I charged them they’d have to find an alternative service. I am considering charging them £10.00 for a copy of the user manual which I normally give away free (PDF download) but it doesn’t seem right somehow.

It seems that sometimes it’s easier to sell something than give it away.

Many businesspeople are still unclear on the issue of environmental responsibility or do not factor it into decision-making, according to monthly internet surveys by The University of Nottingham Institute for Enterprise and Innovation (UNIEI).

Almost half the responders to a pair of business surveys thought that the concept of a carbon footprint was ‘of little or no help’ in clarifying the nature of environmental impact.

The findings, which come on the back of public acknowledgement of green issues among major corporations such as Marks & Spencer, suggest many small and medium-sized businesses are not keeping pace with larger organisations in terms of awareness of green issues.Among those responding to the latest UK Business Barometer (UKBB) and its sister survey the UK Business Adviser Barometer (UKBAB), only 21 per cent deemed the impact of their business on the environment to be a significant factor in their strategic decision-making.

By contrast, 48 per cent said the environment is slightly or ‘not at all’ significant in their strategic decision-making. The surveys also found that a significant proportion of businesses are not prepared for all that the UK environment can throw at them. Of the businesspeople questioned, 59 per cent said they had no clear plans for how they would continue trading in the face of ‘Acts of God’ such as the storms which battered Britain in January 2007. And 61 per cent of responders to the survey said they had no specific insurance to cover loss of earnings through such events.

Other findings of the latest survey point to increase use of electronic communication in place of face-to-face meetings. Some 42 per cent of UKBB respondents thought their importance had diminished in the face of email and the internet, while only 17 per cent thought their importance had increased.

Face-to-face meetings are still reckoned to be important by 43 per cent of UKBAB respondents, and 23 per cent think their importance has increased. Businesses contributing to the parallel UKBB survey returned a similar response.

Participants were also asked if they could see any scope for substituting alternatives for face-to-face meetings, such as teleconferencing, videoconferencing and extended email interaction — 73 per cent of businesses and 84 per cent of advisers said that they could.

The growth of email and the internet has also meant that businesspeople are spending less time on the road, the survey suggests. Some 44 per cent said they were travelling less than five years ago, compared to just 14 per cent travelling more.The UKBB and UKBAB are run by The University of Nottingham and operate over the web to generate very rapid results. The surveys have unique software that enables results to be processed and posted on their respective websites immediately they arrive. The survey results are published monthly and more information, including a press pack, can be found on the web at http://www.ukbb.ac/UI/home.aspx and http://www.ukbab.ac/UI/home.aspx Businesses and advisers wishing to contribute as panellists on the project should visit the appropriate Business Barometer website to register.

So it looks like we are backing the “open skies” aviation deal which will liberalise transatlantic air travel. Well, hip hip hooray!

Whilst this will is undoubtedly be seen as good news for those in the travel industry and should lead to cheaper (at least in cash terms) airfares, I wonder what the implications will be for the environment both in terms of emissions and the quality of life for people leaving near and travelling to and from airports.

According to the BBC website, officials said the agreement could generate 26 million more airline passengers over the next 5 years.

Forgive me for not opening up the champagne.

Brown continues to “Nickle & Dime” the public with increased petrol duty (up 2p per litre from October) and increases in road tax but why didn’t he tackle another source of pollution - air travel.

Depending upon which reports you read, air travel is set to rise by 31% or 35% by 2010. Which ever figures you believe, that’s a LOT of extra travel and that’s a LOT of extra carbon.

The airlines would argue, with some justification, that air travel’s contribution to carbon emissions are often exaggerated, but it doesn’t take a genius to work out that more flying isn’t a good thing for the planet.

Surely even a small tax on kerosene would raise send that message that air travel is unrealistically cheap whilst raising welcome revenues for the treasury.

Here’s a link to an interesting video showing what others think of the budget’s green implications.