Table Of Contents

Executive Summary 2

Introduction 3

The Silos and Limitations of Business Video 4

Today's Expectation: Fully Interactive Internet Presentations 6

The Benefits of Interactive Video Events (The New Webcast) 7

Corporate Town Hall 7

Five Additional Corporate Fully Interactive Webcast Use Cases 8

Requirements For A True Interactive Video Event Offering 9

Solution Spotlight 9

Blue Jeans Primetime At A Glance 10

Conclusion 10

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Executive Summary

The video collaboration industry is buzzing about a new type of business video offering, the“Fully Interactive Video Event”. This white paper will explain why our current webcasts aren't fully interactive, why you should care, and the potential benefits of full interactivity for several large scale business video event use cases.

Traditional videoconferencing is fully interactive, but doesn't scale beyond meetings.

Traditional webcasts can scale to event size, but lack video interactivity.

The benefits of video interactivity are now well established by our growing business VC

use and adoption.

Similar benefits from video interactivity could, and should, be realized in large scale

virtual events as well.

A new breed of flexible, manageable, fully interactive, enterprise ready, business video

software/services will be required to meet the needs of this new market.

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Introduction

Communications technologies, at their core, are designed toreplicate the in-person physical meeting experience in avirtual space. The best technologies tend to do so in waysthat most closely resemble the physical experience, so thatusers can interact naturally, without being distracted oraffected by the technology itself. This paradigm hasparticularly been reflected in the aspirations of businessvideo technology. Users have shown a strong preference forhigh definition, full sized images, face-to-face set ups, goodeye contact, high quality audio, and other elements that addto the "in person" effect.

In fact, many visual collaboration specialists go so far as toargue that an ideal experience should be indistinguishablefrom an in-person experience, citing future technologiessuch as the holodeck on Star Trek. While we may be yearsaway from the “final frontier” of remote communications,today's business class video solutions certainly canapproximate a real face-to-face experience well enough toallow for extremely natural, and productive, video meetings.

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Traditional webcasts aren't simply lagging in interactivity, they fail to recreate even the basic dynamics of a large scale, in-person show.

Unfortunately, this success in interactive video meetings has failed to translate to virtual large presentation technologies. Traditional webcasts aren't simply lagging in interactivity, they fail to even recreate the basic dynamics of a large scale, in-person show. Here are a few examples:

In Person Event Traditional Webcast Event

Presenters can express themselves via facial expressions, voice and movement

Presenters generally are limited to voice and screenshare. A minority include video, which is typically a small thumbnail.

Audience can ask questions in their own voiceAudience can text/IM questions, which are theninterpreted and re-positioned by the moderator

Presenter responds directly to questioner Presenter responds to moderator

Audience member's reaction to his question being answered is viewable by all attendees

No one can see any audience member at any time

Natural follow up to questions, or even real timeinteractivity, is achieved

No real back and forth takes place

Adding insult to injury, traditional webcasts are also notoriously complicated, stressful, and expensive. In addition to the inherent stress of presenting to a large audience, we have to deal with unfamiliar interfaces and rely on third-party services for set up, resulting in a lack of control and comfort that can impact our performance.

Today's business video community has been limited to a choice between a fully interactive meeting experience, or a significantly compromised large event experience. In this white paper we will look into the causes for these limitations, the real need for improvement, and the benefits of a fully interactive large virtual event.

The Silos and Limitations of Business Video

Business video has historically been shackled into limited use cases with limited features. This is primarily due to the fact that the technology behind moving video over the Internet is anything but trivial. Flexibility was not a consideration in the early development of business video solutions, as it was enough of a challenge to simply meet their primary functions. The result was a portfolio of business video products, each requiring their own servers, infrastructure, and providers for each use case. Interactive face-to-face meetings, event streaming, webcasting, etc., all required completely separate, and potentially complicated and expensive, solutions.

At some point, we expected these solutions to start to converge. After all, for the most part they are just different applications of the same three base technologies: capturing video, transmitting itacross the internet, and playing it. The expected final result will simply be a "business video" solution, which allows us to use and share video any way we want, for any type of possible use.

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This convergence has already started. Withtoday's software, we've become so adept atcapturing, sending, and sharing video across theInternet that we can break the previousparadigms. In addition, the availability of largebandwidth and powerful personal computershave allowed for further expansion for videoapplications. The result is an existinghardware/bandwidth platform in the enterprise,ready to support a new breed of convergedbusiness video application software.

In particular, the line between webconferencing(traditionally strong content share with weakvideo), and videoconferencing (traditionallystrong video with weaker content share), has allbut disappeared. While some vendors andanalysts continue to use these terms, the fact isthe latest generation of these products make thedistinction somewhat immaterial. In fact, somehave abandoned the old distinctions and simplyrefer to everything in this space as "conferencingsolutions". Whether you plan an interactiveface-to-face meeting, or a one way presentation,today's "conferencing solutions" can do the job,regardless of their WC or VC labels.

However, this breaks down as soon as we start getting into bigger meetings with more than a few dozen participants. Once we start to get into larger sized groups, we get into the "event" space, which has remained a silo technology. For events, not only is a separate software solution required, often a service provider is required to host and manage the event. As a result, online events are expensive, complicated, and stressful. Even worse, they often fail to leverage any in-house video solutions (whether they be VC or WC) that your organization already has, and would prefer to use. Finally, even if you can bear the difficulties inherent in producing a large online event, it will not have the full interactivity of a smaller meeting, resulting in a compromised experience.

As the power of our computers, networks and video technology continues to grow, these compromises and limitations make less and less sense. In fact, today's users are starting to question these constraints and ask for more flexibility.

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The line between webconferencing (traditionally strong content share with weak video), and videoconferencing(traditionally strong video with weaker content share), has all but disappeared.

Today's Expectation: Fully Interactive Internet Presentations

Today's users are more familiar with video, and understand its power and benefits. They are using videoconferencing at home (Skype, Facetime, Google Hangouts, etc.), and no longer see it as a future technology. While this was not true a decade ago, today's average worker is very comfortable being on video and working with video. At this point they are starting to expect (even demand) access to video in the workplace. However, we expect more at the workplace than commercial quality VC. We want the ease of software-based video, but the power of full-featured business quality applications, and we want to maintain these benefits as we scale up to larger events.

Not only are the users ready, the higher-level decision makers are also on board. After decades of studies on the effects of business video, we are all well aware of the productivity, connectivity, and quality of life benefits to be gained by its implementation. The success of "boardroom video" has been so powerful that we are ready to now go beyond the boardroom. Far beyond the boardroom. We now want, and even expect, to be able to leverage business video for a number of applications.

One prime target for the use of fully interactive video is the event space. The standard one-way online presentation is still very heavily used, but attendees are starting to complain. We aremulti-taskers and it is hard to focus on a slide deck for an hour. In fact, many of us even plan to use the time during webcasts to catch up on our email or perform other tasks. This is devastating for those who spend a lot of time preparing and rehearsing these events.

The logical solution is to increase the interactivity of these events to make them more engaging. Ideally, as explained above, an online event should be a virtual mirror of an in person presentation, offering full face-to-face interactivity with any given audience member at any given time.

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The Benefits of Interactive Video Events (The New Webcast)

Corporate Town Hall

The “town hall” or corporate webcast, is a fixture in the enterprise world for a number of reasons. Most obviously, the opportunity for senior management to speak directly to the entirety of their department or company is a lot more compelling and effective than sending out yet another memo to the masses. If you want to inspire your workers, a fiery speech will go a lot farther than the most passionately written email blast.

Ideally, a town hall meeting lives up to its traditional name, providing a democratic style, interactive, back and forth between leadership and the troops. A physical, in-person, town hall often achieves this objective, as ideas are exchanged, and true dialogues take place. In other words, there is a lot more going on than a basic presentation.

Many of the primary goals may be of a presentation nature, moving information in one direction from leadership to employees such as sharing the company's strategic path, rallying the sales team, establishing goals etc. However, a fully interactive town hall can yield far more benefits, as the leadership can learn a lot from employee feedback, such as their take on the strategic path, current issues blocking sales, and whether or not the established goals appear to be achievable from their perspective.

Unfortunately, it is not always possible to bring the entire company, or even department, to one location. This is especially true for larger enterprises. Thus beget the virtual town hall. If the team can't physically be there, at least they can tune in from their desktops via webcast. However, this is not a perfect solution as much of the power, and almost all of the interactivity is lost.

Proponents of the webcast town hall will argue that it is, in fact, an interactive experience, as viewers can send questions via text/IM to the presenters. But this is not true interactivity. We shouldn't change the definition of the word interactive, just to suit the limitations of webcasts. When we meet in-person, we expect true interactivity, which is a back-and-forth, face-to-face, discussion. If one was to hold an in-person meeting, and tell attendees that they may not talk, but could only pass notes to a moderator, the attendees would complain about the lack of interactivity.

As stated in the introduction to this document, the best virtual experience is one that mimics the in-person experience. If questions via text are not interactive enough for physical town halls, they should not be accepted without question in virtual town halls. From the employee perspective, they want their voices to be heard, figuratively and literally. From the leadership perspective, they want to hear and understand their employees' concerns and create a back-and-forth dialogue to let the employees know they are being heard. Furthermore, face-to-face interactions not only add a massive level of engagement and improved communication, but can help to foster the loyalty and bonding that even the largest companies seek from their teams.

Despite the limitations of virtual town halls, they are still extremely popular and commonplace because the compromises in interactivity are outweighed by the convenience and cost savings compared to flying everyone to headquarters. However, a compromise free virtual experience would clearly be preferable.

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Five Additional Corporate Fully Interactive Webcast Use Cases

The benefits of full interactivity, as described above in the town hall setting, would similarly apply to the many other corporate webcast use cases. The examples listed below are well established practices in many enterprise organizations. Introducing full (properly moderated) interactivity to these events seems an inevitability, as the benefits across the board are readily apparent.

1. Training: Whether corporate training from HR or sales training to a global sales team, the

event is much more than a mere presentation. Interactivity is crucial as the trainer is not just responsible for sharing one-way information, but must ensure that the audience is actually interested, paying attention, and ideally absorbing the material.

2. HR Onboarding: Similar to training, this is a situation where the presenter isn't just

sharing information, but has a responsibility to ensure the audience is really paying attention and “getting it.”

3. Investor Relations: This one is a no-brainer. No one wants any communication

confusion with their investors.

4. Marketing: The typical, public facing corporate webinar is ubiquitous. The ROI has been

proven. Logically, there is good reason to believe the ROI would be even greater if we improve the experience.

5. Public Announcements: Organizations often want a little more impact than just putting

out a press release, and will have an exec conduct a webinar with the announcement. Q&A is standard, and ready for more interactivity.

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Requirements For A True Interactive Video Event Offering

In order to meet the above use cases, we would ideallywant a single solution, flexible enough for different sizedgroups and a variety of meeting dynamics. An idealsolution would be a software based platform, supported bya vendor with enough experience handling video over theinternet to provide the flexibility needed for a fullyinteractive virtual town hall. This solution should be able toscale to massive events, far beyond the typicalvideoconference, without losing any of the interactivity,ease of use, and power of that small video meeting.

The ideal solution, in the simplest terms, would breakdown the barriers between the typical smallvideoconference, and the large event. Rather than send aquestion by text, an attendee should be able to do thevirtual equivalent of raising her hand, taking themicrophone from the moderator, and even joining thepanel on stage for a short time while discussing herquestion. All attendees should be able to see thequestioner's face as she asks her question, and as she reacts and responds to the answer. A natural followup dialogue, with full interactivity and fully viewable by all attendees, should be available.

Solution Spotlight

Blue Jeans Network, the sponsor of this document, has recently released a new offering (called Blue Jeans Primetime) designed to meet the requirements listed above, as it adds the power of bi-directional videoconferencing to the audience itself during large scale events. Any audience member can be allowed to “go live” and participate via video. With Blue Jeans Primetime, the moderator can “promote” an individual audience member, giving her the option to join the panel on bi-directional video, appearing on equal foot with the video panel, to ask her question. This clearly will allow for more interactivity, back and forth, and compelling discussion, than the typical text based Q & A session.

While Blue Jeans Primetime appears to match the description of the ideal virtual town hall platform, and other corporate uses described above, it also has potential for a number of exciting new use cases, never before attempted in the virtual space. Early examples already include Blue Jeans Primetime events in entertainment, media, sports, and education. With the flexibility of this platform, and the appeal of interactive events, we shouldn't be surprised if more uses continue to pop up.

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We shouldn't change the definition of the word interactive just to suit the limitations of webcasts.

Blue Jeans Primetime At A Glance

Conclusion

At the end of the day, the case for fully interactive video town hall meetings isn't that complicated. The ability to attend town halls virtually from our desktops has changed the way we do business, as evidenced by the massive numbers of business webcasts hosted every year. Despite the inherent compromises of traditional desktop webcasts, the ability to attend without travel makes them an essential element of the business workflow. The good news is, as we increase interactivity, we will eliminate many of these compromises.

Blue Jeans Primetime is a great example of how the increasing flexibility and power of software video solutions is allowing for more natural remote experiences, beyond the typical boardroom videoconferencing paradigm. By bringing the interactivity of a small meeting experience, to virtualtown halls and other large scale business video events, they are further raising the bar for companies looking to leverage the full power of business video.

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About the Author

David Maldow is the Founder & CEO of Let's Do Video and one of thevisual collaboration industry's most prolific writers. Prior to foundingLet’s Do Video, David was Managing Partner at Telepresence Options,one of the industry’s most recognized print publication and news sites. Itwas there that he authored 150+ pieces of public content, gaining himrecognition as an industry expert. Earlier in his career, David managedthe Wainhouse Research Video Test Lab, where he developed theability to assess products / solutions from an IT perspective, but with aneye for user experience and adoptability.

Let's Do Video is an online-only news website covering business video technologies and strategies. Founded in July 2014 by David Maldow, LDV's mission is to provide third-party, informative, educational content and news to the visual collaboration community. LDV is more than the typical industry resource, adding intense thought leadership to the best public facing industry coverage on the web.

About Blue Jeans Network

Blue Jeans Network aims to bring great minds together to meet, share ideas and reach their audience through the power of video collaboration. By making video communication easy, secure and scalable, customers can make online conversations, meetings and events personal again. Blue Jeans' cloud-based platform has taken video into the mainstream, giving business and thought leaders the power to interact face-to-face with anyone, anywhere.

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