During any serious flu pandemic, when you're trying to minimize face-to-face contact, your employees may be working from home or scattered among different satellite locations.
In that situation, how would you conduct needed meetings?
- Departmental, project, and management meetings.
- Meetings to discuss the pandemic's impact on your operations.
- Meetings with customers to discuss their projects and needs.
- Meetings with prospective customers, including sales presentations.
- Meetings with your suppliers.
- Meetings with your Board of Directors, accounting firm, or legal counsel.
One way to still conduct these meetings is with an online service called GoToMeeting. You can deliver presentations, collaborate on documents, and securely share confidential information online from anywhere at any time.
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| As leader of a GoToMeeting session, you use the control panel (enlarged below) to: see a list of attendees, text chat with attendees, record the meeting, interactively draw on the screen, and more. Audio conferencing enables discussions. |
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Web-based group conferencing
As its name suggests, GoToMeeting is a companion application to GoToMyPC. While GoToMyPC lets employees remotely control their office PCs, GoToMeeting lets you connect several computers for a group meeting. It's Web-based group conferencing. The computers can be anywhere.
Meeting attendees don't need pre-loaded software on their PCs in order to participate - they can attend by simply clicking on a URL Web address sent from the meeting host. So anyone can be invited to participate in the meeting. And you can conduct meetings spontaneously, whenever needed.
Among the features:
- Meetings can be one-to-one or with a group.
- One person hosts the meeting - with everyone viewing the same screen contents.
- You can instantly change presenters and share keyboard and mouse control.
- Audio conferencing is included, using a regular toll-based number, dialed like any long-distance call. (Or you can use other means of providing audio conferencing.)
- It's secure: 128-bit end-to-end encryption.
- It has an intuitive interface. You learn it quickly.
- It has desktop recording and playback. Make a copy of the meeting for later use.
Flat-rate pricing; Unlimited usage
GoToMeeting is $49 per month for unlimited online meetings with up to 10 attendees per meeting. Meet as often as you want - as long as you want. One flat monthly rate. No hidden fees. No overages. (An annual plan saves 20 percent.)
For larger needs, GoToMeeting Corporate lets you centrally administer five or more GoToMeeting accounts. Plus, you can have up to 200 attendees per meeting.
For online presentations (as opposed to collaborative meetings), a related service called GoToWebinar lets up to 1,000 people take part as a remote audience. Your remote audience could be employees, customers, business partners, industry associates, or whoever you invite.
TIP: For remote-control access to your office PC from any other PC, look at GoToMeeting's companion application - GoToMyPC. I discuss GoToMyPC here. And here's the GoToMyPC site.
TIP: Read my post "Telecommuting - A business lifeline" to learn how and why a pandemic might scatter your employees away from the office. Think it Through.
Related Telecommuting posts
Telecommuting - A business lifeline
Telecommuting Tools - Using PCs by remote control
Telecommuting Tools - What is GoToMyPC?
Telecommuting Tools - Web-based group conferencing (GoToMeeting)
Telecommuting Tools - USB flash drives
Telecommuting Tools - Portable applications
Telecommuting Tools - Portable applications for U3 smart drives
Telecommuting Tools - USB flash drives vs. Other portable data storage
Telecommuting Tools - USB flash drives vs. remote computing (GoToMyPC)
Telecommuting Tools - What size USB flash drive?
Blog Category: "Telecommuting"
FOOTNOTE:
*Telecommuting refers to working in a place other than the traditional business office - typically working from home or an alternate "remote" office. You communicate with the main office via telecommunications networks - telephone, fax, and Internet-connected PC.
