ONE+ ‘s Jason Hensel talks with VenueGen CEO David Gardner about the usability and user-engagement advantages of immersive web technologies. “You recognize people on-site. You can see who’s talking. When everyone turns and looks at you, your energy level spikes. It feels just like being in a real meeting.”
Creating engagement via Web conference is challenging even with small groups, and large groups can be almost prohibitively difficult to monitor. The ideal solution would recreate the natural engagement and interactivity of face-to-face instructor-led training (ILT) in a way that’s as easy, convenient, and accessible as Web conferencing. A handful of up-and-coming companies are introducing Web 3-D apps as a potential solution. They look similar to Second Life in certain basic ways, but are super-intuitive to use and are designed specifically for business use in terms of scalability, participant control, usability, and multi-screen, low-bandwidth content-sharing (a useful feature that ’2-D Web conferencing platforms don’t provide).
The best of these platforms have gone to great effort to recreate the essence of face-to-face communication, without a user learning curve, for better online learning. For example, they feature directional, actual-distance (but adjustable) sound, which studies indicate is crucial to the brain’s ability to quickly absorb information.
They also allow both learners and instructors to be in control of all the non-verbal communicators we semi-consciously use in-person that contribute to an engaging sense of presence. Instructors can tell by sight when learners are focused and engaged from anywhere inside the 3-D training room (and learners know it, so they’re naturally more engaged).
Collaboration flows more freely with more people participating and fewer people talking over one another or ‘checking out.’ Because they’re virtually sitting among their easily identifiable peers instead of alone in front of a 2-D Web conference, learners are more accountable for their presence, so they become more engaged in the course objectives. In essence, being in one of these Web 3-D environments ‘feels’ natural, so both training and learning become almost as naturally engaging as they are with in-person ILT.
- Kate Hendrick, director of marketing for VenueGen
Advances in 3D technology continue to redefine the online meeting and e-learning landscape, previously dominated by 2D. While webinars were effective for the past 10 years, virtual meetings such as those offered by VenueGen now offer better results to their traditional counterparts with additional benefits to spare.
1. “Face to Face” Factor – One immediate advantage of an online virtual meeting vs. a webinar is the ability of participants to determine exactly who is speaking. Not only can you see the 3-D representation of everybody in the meeting, VenueGen provides name tags for each individual. Additionally, each individual is repositioned to focus on the speaker or the content that is being presented so that there is always a visual focus. The ability to determine immediately who is talking eliminates the guesswork and the lag time associated with recognizing a specific voice. Simply put, the old-fashioned audio or Web conferencing presentation should fall the way of the black-and-white television set.
2. Integrated Content Control – Another advantage is the ability to integrate content control within the presentation setting, i.e. allowing users to pull up individual windows alongside the main screen to take notes, perform research and web searches in real time, etc. without sacrificing attention to the presentation at hand or attempting to recall important points for later transcription. These features make meetings more productive as attendees are able to do everything on their screen.
3. 3D Engagement – There is a reason why companies are spending $2 billion per year on expensive Telepresence systems that cost $500,000 and up. It’s because there is nothing like the feeling that you are physically in a meeting with your colleagues. This added dimension allows one to view him or herself as a participant rather than observer, actor rather than audience, and as such instills a greater commitment to engage with the material and business colleagues engaged in the room with them. However, many don’t have access the high expenses associated with these systems. Luckily, technology can now allow any sized company to attend 3-D virtual meetings using a PC with internet connection.
4. Interactivity – Perhaps the most important difference between regular webinars and virtual meetings is that of overall interactivity. While the previous points hint at it, this simple idea’s value cannot be understated. Interactivity allows a presentation to transform from mere speech to active conversation amongst those involved within it. Simply put, unlike webinars, a 3-D Web conferencing platform encourages everyone to actively participate. If an individual just wants information without giving input, a webinar is ideal. If any individual actually wants to engage her colleagues to learn more from them and inevitably participate, think about a 3-D virtual being platform. 3-D allows participants to question presenters or each other directly, contribute other ideas or constructive criticisms, etc. This opportunity to engage engenders everyone with a stake in the overall conversation and responsibility to pay full attention to the information presented rather than consciously or unconsciously tune out if interest is lost.
Overall, online virtual meetings allow individuals to enjoy the benefits of real-time, face to face, meetings despite being in separate locations. While webinars initially bridged the gap and showed that effective interaction over great distances was possible, its limitations in interactivity grew more apparent over time. Virtual meetings now solve that problem effectively and efficiently. Head over to VenueGen’s website and see the advantages first-hand with our 30-day free trial.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”–Margaret Mead
Let’s be honest. Effective advocacy starts long before the point where strong leaders recognize the need to get important messages across. At the core, change or desirable results begin to form the moment someone recognizes who to interact with and how to best get their points across.
The real truth begins to surface the moment strong leaders demonstrate that they are capable of both listening and speaking.
That’s the model we began to address at the point where we began plotting out the creation of VenueGen. We wanted not only to create a Web Conference and Event platform, we hoped to equip thought leaders with everything they needed to conduct sessions that are easy to schedule, even easier to conduct. We hoped to spark the sharing of profitable interactions and powerful dialogue.
This week is an exciting one for us, as we’ve launched VenueGen Thunder. We’re reaching out to thousands of bloggers, thought leaders, non-profit organizations, small businesses, trade associations, community advocacy groups and to anyone with a strong following.
All we ask in return is for folks to demonstrate the overwhelming ability to achieve change nirvana through the use of our Virtual 3D Platform.
Can you help us spark community action and change? Please offer your comments and suggestions.
The age of 3D adoption is upon us: virtual platforms are smarter, and users now have more control and heightened access than ever before. 3D environments can be incredibly engaging, interactive and cost effective when supported by the right technology and functionality.
Innovative businesses can improve the delivery of information by correctly utilizing VOIP and sound to augment attendees’ experiences. Here are some helpful tools that have been created to ensure a successful meeting:
1. Individual Microphone Mute and Volume Control: Each attendee is able to customize the volume for other speakers to suit their preferences. In other words, if Bill’s volume is too low, I should be able to click on Bill’s avatar and increase his volume but only for me (i.e. this will not affect how others hear Bill).
2. Open Microphone and Echo Cancellation: A participant without a headset creates an open microphone, which rebroadcasts and echoes the sound, ruining your virtual training class or meeting. The resolution lies in a feature that provides the host control to force only the attendees with open microphones into “push to talk” mode and leaves everyone else as is.
3. Positional Sound: It allows virtual attendees to hear others speaking predominately through their left or right speaker based on the relative location of others to them in the virtual space. It also reduces the volume of others proportionately to how far away they are from the listener. This significantly increases the sense of presence and immersion in virtual environments.
4. Multi-Channel VoIP and Proximity Zones: A single VoIP channel works OK for smaller virtual gatherings but for larger classes, a multi-channel solution is required. A two-channel VoIP technology allows you hear everyone in the room and the presenter simultaneously.
5. Dial-in Capabilities: Dial-in refers to the ability to dial a telephone number that connects the caller to a VoIP channel within a virtual environment where firewalls or lack of headsets hinders the caller. The best solution is one that turns the attendee’s telephone receiver into a VoIP headset. This capability alone dramatically increases the attendees who can participate where they wouldn’t have been able to previously.
Sound is incredibly important in our interactions with others. Being able to hear a speaker clearly makes a huge difference in the message being broadcasted. One lost word and the message could be altered for better or worse. Thus it’s crucial that 3D worlds are able to selectively focus on a particular individual, just as we would outside of the immersive world.
Reality bites, especially if you conduct a regular schedule of online sales training sessions or staff meetings and haven’t planned to make your sessions personally engaging and meet the needs of your meeting participants. Before you start working on a flashy Power Point presentation or plan to deliver a killer motivation speech , why not focus your efforts on bringing out your users needs out from under the Cloak of invisibility?
For, where high rates or user action, information retention, profitability and increased returns on investment are concerned, you’ll never succeed if you cannot give those whose business is important to you engaging command of the interaction process.
Like 1:1 meetings, you must plan to be relevant in 3D
Organize your efforts to be concise and to make the most of the time you have to conduct a quality information exchange with your customers/prospects
Pay close attention to small details.
Do your homework, be fully prepared to listen first.
Work to encourage participation, establish trust and maintain competency and order in the process of bringing out relevant information.
Gather all of the necessary feedback from participants during the meeting. You must work to
Measure emotional responses to your messages before working to fulfill participant needs
Where the intersection of profitability and virtual 3D meeting technology is concerned, here’s good news. Unlike the traditional online meeting or audio conference calls, many of the tools you can use to conduct 3D meetings are not just designed to make your messages attractive or to insure inter-connectivity anymore.
It’s now very simple to use 3D virtual reality technology to make your meetings both engaging and proactive. You can deliver transparent messages and expect these meetings to be more effective than in person, 1:1 meetings simply because you have the ability to fully understand reactions to your messages. You can see for yourself how engaged participants are with the meetings. You can solicit comments and participation in more ways. And, you can keep your people from multi-tasking while participating in your online meeting or audio conference.
In the coming weeks we’ll highlight successful businesses and the steps they take to make their internal conferences, ongoing training sessions and weekly sales team meetings profitable through the use of Virtual Reality, 3D meeting and conferencing tools.
In the mean time, isn’t it time online sessions became more personal like 1:1/face-to-face meetings?
“Whoever gets this right could score big. Research firm Research 2.0 estimates the 3D avatar market for business will grow to $8 billion in annual revenues in 2014. That doesn’t include the training and collaboration markets. ” –Venture Beat
Think hard about your last website collaboration or online training session. Can you remember all the planning and preparation you did only to experience a 15-minute delay getting started because three users had problems logging in and understanding how to navigate through a complicated system?
Do you remember your meeting outcomes, or is the only account of your experience a browser crash and/or a session interrupted by on hold music or poor sound quality? Was your user experience clearly positive or as effective as using aluminum cans and string connections to connect your session participants?
Today, developers of 3-D platforms have triggered all of their efforts around providing profitable user sessions in your browser in one minute or less. They have simplified the number of actions necessary to sign up and start participating. They’ve insured solid VoiP and dial up sound platforms. They’ve spent thousands of research hours studying the communication patterns, gestures, body language attributes and expressions that meeting participants use. They’ve made it easy to give all participants easy access to collaboration tools.
They’ve simplified everything necessary to give users more control.
In short, development of 3-D platforms must always remain customer centric in providing more ways take the pain out of operating the system so users can concentrate on the value of the information exchanged and the quality of engagement through a host of interactions.
We’re continually asked this question: In the future, what applications do you see being most profitable to businesses and collaborative training organizations? Our success in helping businesses profit will depend on our ability to make sure that we address anything and everything that can and will go wrong.
That’s why we’re pleased to use this blog to offer insights on what can and will go right every time a Virtual 3-D conference is conducted in the future.
Have you attended a Virtual 3-D conference? If so, how can your experience be improved?
And why are industry analysts so jazzed about the technologies available right now.
“VenueGen is a huge leap forward in enterprise-level 3-D virtual meetings, primarily for the features that personalize and bring a human element back into the meeting. We have lost many of the visual cues that play such a large role in human communication as we have moved towards more online meetings, and VenueGen may truly be an idea whose time has come.”
Sure, everyone on the planet who has ever attended an online web or audio conference call will gladly embrace any step to make these sessions, easier, more realistic, interactive, and less monotonous. But what about doing all this in a 3-D virtual meeting?
Well, while most 3-D platforms on the market today lack many of the features and capabilities necessary to host high fidelity, full featured, problem-free virtual events, today’s 3-D technology now extends beyond the arena of personal entertainment to the corporate workspace, in which business colleagues have adopted it to meet, collaborate, train and present information in virtual meetings. 3-D virtual platforms can now be delivered as software as a service (SaaS) and have become accessible to smaller businesses, providing a powerful competitive advantage, once only available to larger corporations with huge budgets.
Prior to this, early adopters of 3-D technologies faced many obstacles including immature software and limited technical functionality.
Here are a few crucial features that have been developed in order to insure that immersive 3- D meeting technology is responsive to the needs of both small and large business communities:
1. Avatar Realism: An animated character (Avatar) representing the participant, including the ability to add your photo for a truly lifelike likeness. Additionally, avatars now have automated movements to mimic actions done in real life. For example, avatars will re-adjust themselves in their seats occasionally, and be driven by your voice, without any action on your part.
2. Lifelike Sound Settings: Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoiP) enables Sensurround sound for increased realism. The sound will readjust according to the location of the other meeting attendee. You hear people from the direction and distance they are from you, and you can adjust their volume. If an individual is far and to your right, your speakers or headset will change to reflect that distance and positioning.
3. Simplified Information Sharing: Now, instead of sending out a separate email with all the materials to review beforehand, content sharing is integrated into 3-D meetings. Together, you can watch a PowerPoint, a video file, or screen share documents.
These are just a few of the many other dynamic elements to make your training session far more engaging, highly cost effective, successful and more time efficient. We will be going into more depth about each in the future.
So, whatever you do, plan on bookmarking and visiting our blog regularly to continue discussions about industry best practices and advancement and ongoing development of 3-D interactive training and meeting platforms.
Advances in 
