Lots of people work from home these days. Or at Starbucks or Panera.
And for those who don’t happen to have a conference room of their own, there is GoToMeeting.com.
I first heard about the site from a radio commercial but hadn’t paid attention to it until I saw on my Facebook feed “Tom Lawrence is wondering why he didn’t sign up for GoToMeeting earlier.”
Lawrence, who runs Groundwork Design and is a close, personal Facebook friend of mine (all 322 of my Facebook friends are close to me), came to the BizSense meet-and-greet this summer, and we had a brief discussion about the site, which he said he uses regularly.
GoToMeeting offers a free 30-day trial, so I signed up. The first thing I noticed was that I had to download software. I like things that run straight through the Internet browser. But I allowed it to happen because I had faith that Lawrence wouldn’t steer me wrong.
Lawrence was right. GoToMeeting is awesome. The software gives you the ability to see what’s on someone’s screen and speak via web-chat to all the attendees of the meeting at once. And that can be a lot of attendees, because the software allows for up to 1,000 people to be at the same online meeting.
But it doesn’t just display what is on the screen – it also allows you to hand control of your entire computer over to any one of the attendees. And the host of the meeting can also take controls back if that person starts opening files he isn’t supposed to.
So I thought I understood the basics of GoToMeeting and I decided it was time to take it to the next level: It was time to go to a meeting. And who else would I meet with but the always entertaining, good-natured Tom Lawrence.
My meeting with Lawrence started with an email invitation. When I launched the software, we were ready to meet. I was talking to Lawrence in Richmond from Philadelphia using nothing but the microphone and speakers on my laptop. (I don’t think he knew that even though it was 2:30, I was still in my Phillies pajamas. I’m on vacation this week; good thing the system doesn’t do video conferencing.)
As soon as the meeting launched, I was staring at Lawrence’s desktop. Tom walked me through one of his latest projects for Groundwork, a virtual tour of Tennessee Tech. He handed me control of his screen, and as I moved and clicked my mouse, the action duplicated on his screen. Very cool stuff.
When Tom took the control back, he showed me some of the features that the software has, including the ability to markup and highlight your screen using drawing tools. So whether you want to draw a moustache on your boss in front of 1,000 people or just call attention to one of the salient points in your presentation, GoToMeeting’s drawing tools can make it happen.
If you don’t have a mic on your computer, you can call into the meeting via telephone or you can just use the text chat feature.
All this can be recorded and saved on your computer so that you can go and relive your meeting at any point. This saves you the bother of taking notes during the meeting. In fact, unless you are presenting or actively participating in the meeting, you could hit record and play solitaire and no one would be the wiser because you can just watch it on your time. Sweet.
But you knew the other shoe would have to drop at some point. The system costs a bit of money. For a smaller version of GoToMeeting, which would allow up to 15 attendees, it’s going to run you about $50 per month, $40 if you buy a yearlong subscription. For the full package and 1,000 attendees, it’s going to run you $1,000 for a year or $100 per month.
So, the system is amazing, but it is also rather expensive. But if this sounds like something you could use, it’s simple, well designed and powerful. I recommend it for people who work from the road a lot or who just don’t like sitting through long, powerfully boring PowerPoint presentations.
Plus it lessens some of that envy for small businesses or solo entrepreneurs who don’t rock a conference room with those fake mahogany tables and black leather chairs.
David Larter covers technology for BizSense. Please send news tips to David@richmondbizsense.com.
In our conversations, I completely forgot to mention that for a small business person who may need to record the audio of conference calls for their own benefit, a conference call number by itself can easily be distributed without anyone using their computer (with the exception of the organizer).
For something slightly less robust (but free), there is always also DimDim: http://www.dimdim.com/
For something more robust and cheaper, try Voxwire: http://voxwire.com
There is a free 30-day trial available on their site. I use this service and love it.