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