I really like being able to attend webinars with presentations and participants from around the world. And appreciate the wide range of topics offered by different organizations. And I can see using the format for meetings with clients that aren’t local. For local meetings, I do like face to face generally – preferably over coffee and lunch!

But even if it’s not be the best tool for some of your group meetings, I think it’s great that you’re helping staff get comfortable with this technology. They’ll then be more likely to participate in sessions of interest to them.

We tried DimDim and had problems with consistency from screen to screen. It was not user friendly when adjusting for screen resolution, and found that it might be more trouble than it was worth. Our goal was to make this as simple as possible. We could always try it again.

Elluminate looks like you have to pay. Is there a free version?

I may be old fashioned, but web conferencing leaves me a little cold as a way of providing meaningful instruction. It could make for a quick demo, but I think screencasts do this effectively. Screencasts do not require the scheduling and you now can comment asynchronously, via seesmic video: http://wiki.seesmic.com/Wp-plugin

I’ve attended quite a few training sessions & meetings using Elluminate. Always been a good experience. I’ve used some others too, but forget what they were, was too focused on the session and didn’t pay attention to the tool – which is as it should be!

Quite a bit of discussion of webinar tools at the Pres4Lib meeting a few weeks ago.

As a meeting tool, it may work fine, but we see no real advantage beyond the ability to see someone while listening to their voice.

Has anyone had any luck making webconferencing work as a method for delivering instruction?