Conferences have become an integral part of the business world, and even have some usage for the average person. It’s a powerful tool, allowing you to organize a meeting with fellow employees or other enterprises to organize current affairs, discuss what the future may hold, and how your enterprise is performing.
For many businesses, enterprises are mostly done in person, where several people sit around a table where they discuss the conference’s topics. This isn’t the case, however, thanks to the power of the Internet.
Today, you can easily set up a video conference and meet with people from all over the world. Forget expensive conference centres and months worth of planning; rather learn how to set up and fully utilise an online conference call that multiple people can take part in.
The technology isn’t new, and like other types of multi-person interaction, such as online video games, online pokies tournaments, or simple meetings, the power of connecting people online is not something to be ignored.
The Basics
Before you can start a conference, you need to cover the basics. For starters, everyone needs to have the right equipment. This means having a working computer or laptop that has connection to the Internet. Laptops tend to come standard with a camera and microphone, but that might not be the case for most computers.
Make sure that everyone has access to a camera, which are generally quite cheap to buy, as well as a microphone, which, like the camera, can be picked up for a low price. If you have a smartphone that you use for gaming and it’s high spec, it may also be able to be used for conferencing.
Software
The next aspect to consider is the software that you intend to use. There are a few different video calling software suites available, and while there are many that you can buy, others might are free to download and use on your PC.
An excellent example of the latter is Skype, which is owned by Microsoft. Skype’s quality has improved vastly over the last few years, and it’s now a valuable way of holding high quality video calls.
If you’re looking for a more professional touch, there are some other choices. RingCentral Office, Vonage Business Cloud, and Intermedia Unite are all highly rated video conferencing software choices that offer a huge range of different options for the business environment.
The Next Step
Having the hardware and software is a good place to start, but it might not be at the right level for an enterprise, especially if you’re looking for high definition video conferencing.
Fast Internet and free video calling software is a start, but you can take it to another level. This involves hiring a dedicated server designed to deal with all types of video calling and conferencing.
The server works to ensure that you have extremely high quality video and audio without interruption, and because you’re hiring the server, it’s almost always managed by a team that can make sure it’s running smoothly. While it is possible to hire and manage your own server, it’s often better left to the experts.