Online meetings have become more relevant as COVID-19, the global pandemic which has claimed thousands of lives, is obliging us to follow social distancing and lockdown rules. Organisations are shifting to teleworking and online meetings to keep people safe. Universities and schools have also turned to online learning. Communicating with others is now predominantly online. The Conference Tech Lab's guide helps you make the best decisions to transition from onsite to online in an effective, efficient, and smart way.
[Latest] The future of meetings: The pandemic has ushered in new ways of organising conferences and other events. Blended meetings, which combine virtual with face-to-face interactions, will become the norm. DiploFoundation’s online conference The Future of Meetings held on Tuesday, 12th May 2020, tackled the most pressing questions and issues, and how to resolve them. Read the Future of Meetings report
Do you need assistance with online meetings and events? The team behind Diplo's Conference Tech Lab has over 20 years of experience in running online events and webinars, and in developing effective e-participation approaches used by major players around the world.
Choosing the right approach
Your first step to choosing the right tools and techniques for your online events is to ask yourself two questions:
1. What type of meetings or events do you plan to organise?
In the current COVID-19 crisis, you are more likely to need an online solution. Think about the level of interaction: To what extent will your participants be asked to intervene, and how? Is your meeting a formal event, or will it have a more informal, laid-back setting? How skilled is your moderator?
Beyond COVID-19, blended approaches involve connecting in-situ hubs with small onsite groups of up to 20 people. This helps preserve some small group in-situ dynamics while connecting to the wider community online.
Your type of meeting will impact the moderation, reporting, and other organisational aspects of the meeting.
In-depth reading: Refer to the outcomes of the 2016 Geneva Engage conference, Menu of Innovative E-participation.
2. Which online platform(s) do you need?
Choosing the right platform and tools depends on how small or large your group will be, the level of engagement during the meeting or event, the duration of each meeting, and the regularity.
Think also about the technical expertise of your group, and the skills needed to use the platform. Will you use multimedia during the meeting? Will your participants connect also through mobile devices? What is the cost you are willing to pay?
To help you choose the right option for your needs, we’ve reviewed some of the leading online platforms.
Choosing the right online meeting platform
The following is a comparative survey of over 20 online meeting platforms and their various plans.
Our in-depth guide to online platforms
Adobe Connect is an online service for web meetings, conferencing, and e-learning:
- Depending on the subscription plan, the service can support up to 1,000 online participants.
- It offers standard solutions for shared media materials as well as a full HD video broadcast.
- The number of shared video feeds is practically unlimited and that's one of the great features of this online service.
- Chat, polls, and features (like breakout rooms) are also available - and often needed for parallel sessions.
- It offers a couple of template settings for the room setup.
- Presenters and organisers have full control over the room and can assign privileges to other users.
- It can be used for a wide range of contexts, from massive online participation (used in the ITU’s online participation meetings), to a university setup.
- The downside: One of the downsides can be the retro design, plus a few shortcomings with regard to meeting recording capabilities.
Cisco WebEx offers a range of solutions for online meetings, blended online-in situ events, and e-learning solutions:
- Users can use features available in most other services such as video and audio, chat and poll.
- It is used by many companies and international organisations. For years, it served as the main online participation tool for the Internet Governance Forum meetings, as well as other UN agencies.
- It can be easily integrated with Google and Microsoft services (Gmail, Drive, Office, or GitHub).
- It works across a wide range of devices and platforms, offering full HD video for participants.
- The integration of live third-party transcription is also available.
- It also offers a team collaboration tool.
- The downside: WebEx still uses VoIP voice services and can also have issues with recording events.
Zoom is a cloud-based service that is used for organising web and video conferencing, as well as webinars:
- It allows presenters to share their screens and record their presentation content.
- It offers the possibility to organise town hall meetings of up to 10,000 viewers, and webinars that can be attended by over 500 attendees.
- Backed by cloud power, Zoom is becoming a top choice among industries, due to its reliability across devices and types of connections.
- Breakout rooms, chat, polls, and virtual backgrounds are among the many features of this online service.
- Password-protected rooms, invitations, and registrations for the events can be handled by the service.
- The design offers the free arrangement of screen elements.
- Integration with Facebook and YouTube for streaming of events is also available.
Blue Jeans is a cloud-based service for online meetings, conference calls, webinars, or town hall meetings:
- Users can connect to the platform from any device.
- The platform allows participants to refer back to the meetings that they attended by going through highlighted points and reading transcripts.
- It can be used for online events and utilise large-scale, interactive video streaming.
- It also offers cloud recording that allows for easy access to your recorded meetings.
Vimeo LiveStream is a service for broadcasting and is often used as a primary service for live video streams, the backbone of online meetings:
- Users can broadcast meetings, add graphic overlays, include multi-cameras, or integrate video streams to other online solutions.
- The service is used across industries, from the biggest tech companies to social networks.
Free and open source software solutions (FOSS)
For many organisations FOSS can be a lifeline. Not every organisation has the ability to pay for numerous licenses for their members’ use. In addition, FOSS can be used for customisation or deployment on any specific infrastructure, such as an integrated part of other platforms (e.g. e-learning platforms). The best examples:
- BigBlueButton, which is an important option for Moodle and other e-learning environments. For its the full integration, the help of a community with experience developing and updating such software might be necessary. Due to increased demand during the Coronavirus crisis, the video recording option is temporarily disabled on the BigBlueButton server, and the maximum duration of a meeting has been reduced to 30 minutes.
- MeetJit, developed by Jitsi, offers browser-based meetings with all the basic functions: high definition video and audio, chat, screen-sharing, cloud recording, and the integration of live stream via YouTube. It offers encrypted communication by default, and there is no need to log in or create an account (this feature might be preferred for privacy-related reasons). It also offers a mobile app for both Android and iOS.
Social media platforms
Social media platforms can scale your outreach. Many people use social media platforms as their primary source of information. They check their feed regularly mostly using mobile devices. Social media algorithms suggest to users what was watched by their friends or contacts. The best examples:
- Facebook Live option is available for all users. It’s mostly used for broadcasting videos from events, and user mobile broadcasts (from conferences, events or gatherings). It can also be integrated with other online participation tools (e.g users can stream Zoom events on Facebook). Some of the other services mentioned above offer this option as well.
- Twitter’s Periscope offers a broadcast solution to assigned users. Some of the most popular videos on the Internet come from this service.
- TikTok offers the option to use live streams for users who have more than 1,000 followers. Moreover, TikTok introduced an option for monetising live streams through ‘virtual gifts’, which serve as virtual tokens that can be exchanged for money.
Smaller size team meetings
Smaller meetings and short ad-hoc online gatherings are useful for coordination or a quick overview. For such meetings, some of the most appropriate services can be collaborative work solutions like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business, or Cisco’s WebEx Teams.
These services offer collaborative tools for a quick office response, such as writing documents, tracking project development, file sharing in company environments, and video and audio communication.
The emergence of mobile messaging platforms as a means for wider participation can also be noticed. Today, organisations organising meetings through WhatsApp, Signal, or Telegram apps. These apps offer encrypted communication and videos that work on 3G and low-bandwidth connections. They are often used by grassroots organisations, and organic communities organised around common points of interest.
Which tools does Diplo use?
At Diplo we combine different platforms according to our needs: Adobe Connect, Cisco WebEx, and Zoom for larger meetings, and Whereby, Skype, and Skype for Business for smaller team meetings.
Turn that background off!
Context is the main victim in online events. For instance, the office context creates different predispositions in participants.
Try to recreate the context, or at least, make people aware of the surroundings in which they connect. Even simple actions can help. You can ask participants at an online meeting to take a photo from their homes and offices, and share with other participants at the online meetings. And what about those filters? People switching on their filters by mistake, or inadvertently leave them on, are often the object of memes. Don’t forget to turn off your filter (unless you would like to inject some humour!).
Here's our light-hearted collection of humorous 'incidents' and memes. We will be adding more...
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Monitoring the shift from onsite to online conferencing
The number of events shifting from physical to online venues is increasing every day. Diplo's Conference Tech Lab is monitoring closely to identify new trends.
Browse the live monitor below, and let us know what your experience as an organiser or online participant has been so far.
Into the future: Artificial intelligence and virtual reality
Artificial intelligence and virtual and augmented reality tools will impact the future of meetings.
Artificial intelligence can make video conferencing more efficient and productive and improve the user experience. Natural language processing, for instance, can be used to provide each participant with an automated transcription and a summary of the meeting or to translate the content of the meeting in other languages. It can also be applied in drafting speeches and statements, which helps participants with limited resources join a particular meeting on an equal footing.
Virtual and augmented reality technologies, on the other hand, can enhance web conferencing performance by bringing participants together virtually and helping them visually experience the content of the meeting.
Diplo is analysing the future of online meetings through its three labs:
- Diplo’s Creative Lab is testing and developing virtual and augmented reality tools. This includes virtual meeting places such as Mozilla’s Hubs platform.
- Diplo’s AI Lab is analysing AI tools, including automated reporting from events and voice-to-text transcription.
- Diplo’s Conference Tech Lab is discussing the behavioural, diplomatic, and protocol aspects of online conferencing.
Did you know? Emerging terms
There is a wide range of terms used to describe the use of electronic tools for meetings, such as: online and teleconferencing, e-participation, virtual events, and online events. New terms are usually coined from a combination of two elements: prefix and noun.
Join the community
The Conference Tech community includes diplomats, business people, media specialists, and others involved in planning, organising, and running online conferences. The Conference Tech Lab keeps the community updated with the latest developments that are important for the future of online conferencing and online meetings.
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