Our free training registration portal is located here:  http://www.connectsolutions.com/training/ and is open to all our customers.  We have scheduled the sessions to be focused one hour periods that will be recorded and can be referred back to for your follow up or that of your colleagues or entire organization.  The best part; well okay maybe the second best part, is that the sessions can also be customized (that makes the FREE part the best I guess) to a very specific topic or feature and we will create a unique classroom training session for you and your colleagues within your organization that is only open to your organization at a time that is mutually agreeable to all of us.

We are fanatical about customer support, service and satisfaction and if our scheduled sessions interfere with your work day let us know an we can arrange a special traning session just for you!  Check out the traning portal for the current schedule and to register for the sessions.  If you think a custom session would be better for you and your team contact our team evangelist (tom@connectsolutions.com) and lets get everyone up to speed on how to best use those Connect accounts!

But can more be done?  Can we go beyond the “Customization” tab put forth by Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional? Sure and here are a few ways to customize your meeting rooms.

One of my favorite ways to customize a meeting room is to use the “Room Background” setting in the menus: Meeting / Room Performance and Appearance / Room Background.  Use an image file, like a .jpg or better yet a .swf file for a more expressive or animated experience.  My preference is for that which works best as a room background and depending on your skills, experience or content on hand one format might be better than the other. Remember you need to upload these files to your Connect server before you can load them into the meeting room; you cannot load a “Room Background” from your desktop like you might upload a file into a meeting room share pod.

For images I get the best results with a .jpg file at 1024 x 768 pixel size image with a modest amount of compression applied to it.  Use whatever image editor you prefer.  I use Adobe Fireworks but that other image editor they have is fine too and probably has more expressive capabilities.

For .swf files I use either Adobe Flash or Adobe Illustrator and publish them and Flash Player 9 files.  If the background was created in Adobe Illustrator I use an 800 x 600 canvas and then just get creative.  The design capabilities of Illustrator are exceptional. Crisp text, the effects, the range of colors and the object options make all the things you create very clean and professional.  If I have something created in Adobe Flash I follow a few basic rules. 1) actionScript 2.0 only and keep the coding to a minimum, 2) when using actionScript I never reach for resources outside the authoring file (can you? Yes. However if you get all complicated and dynamic it can makes things really slow down in the meeting room),  3) I keep the animation to a minimum as it can be distracting and since other pods are going to cover the background it might go from distracting to annoying, 4) don’t use the components that require Flash Player 10 or actionScript 3.0 and finally 5) TEST, Test, test.

You really need to test your .swf files whether from Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Flash or any other tool that outputs .swf files.  Not all authoring tools and vendors create the same quality of .swf file output.  Using a room background while similar to loading a .swf into a share pod is not exactly the same.  So test you room backgrounds in your meeting rooms and if it is an animated .swf let it run for a few minutes and then open pods, switch layouts and make sure your wonderful creation is not impacting your meeting room in an unexpected way.

Okay room backgrounds are great but what else is possible?  You can begin by using the share pod to upload a PPT files, .jpg, or .swf file that has our organizations brand, logo, crest or your personal photo; then I typically delete the entire name from the pod title bar.  Yes it can be blank but it does make it more difficult to locate later if you close the pod.  If you use blank spaces (the spacebar) in the titles the same difficulties apply.  Remember to save your meeting rooms as room templates once you are happy with your customization so that you can have that consistent custom experience and so can all of your meeting room hosts.

Make your own custom pods!  This is the highest level of customization that you can achieve. You do this and do it well you are a true Connect Master.  Alistair Lee at Adobe is one of those masters but he may never admit it. Check out all his creations at the Acrobat Connect Pro Exchange which is really a tribute to Alistair and his productivity as a developer.  Of course, ConnectSolutions is not standing on the sidelines we have developed a few custom pods for our customers and will be coming to market with a few of them in the near future. Keep checking our website for more details.

Okay go forth and customize your Connect experience - your server, your meetings and your events.  Adobe Connect provides many wonderful UI elements but with a little time and effort you can create a tailor made experience that exceeds the out-of-the-box offering.

I have heard myraid stories about organizations who have significantly increased their web conferencing usage due to “no travel” restrictions mandated on employees due to the current economic downturn.  Some organizations have even transformed long-standing in-person events like an annual Sales Conference where 10,000 people fly into Las Vegas, into virtual, online events this year.  What’s more is that there is anecdotal evidence that these organizations are looking at maintaining this model even once the economy recovers due to positive feedback from both attendees and organizers.

While this reduction in business travel is certainly not good news for the airline industry, it is definatly good news for the Earth, and also for those of you already using Web Conferencing; for as more and more people become confortable with the idea that, in most scenarios, meeting virtually can be just as effective as meeting in-person, the more benefit you are going to receive from your investment.

First, we have continued to build a team of customer-focused innovators that is truly incredible.  The company has been growing rapidly over the past several months, and this week alone, we welcomed David Yun and Jason Peace to the team.  Many of you already know David well through his many years of work with Macromedia Breeze, and more recently, his support as a community lead over at connectusers.com.  David will be joining us to lead some new solution offerings we will be announcing very soon.  His knowledge of the market, user requirements, and the overall community, will ensure some great things to come from ConnectSolutions.  Jason joins the engineering team here to also drive some of these new solution offerings I’ve alluded to earlier in this post.  Jason has tremendous experience in Flash and Flex development, including projects at Adobe, Kodak/Ofoto.  Jason will be developing incredible user experiences that support massive-scale (yes, these things can be done at the same time!).

Second, we had an incredible day yesterday out on the San Francisco Bay.  Our team is distributed across the country given our comfort and success in using web-based collaboration tools!  So, its not often that we get everyone under one roof, or in yesterday’s case, under one sail.  Here’s a couple of quick photos from our journey out on the Bay.  Note:  I don’t think any of us were anticipating quite the amount of wind we encountered!!!

Cyrus also had a video camera on-board, so I suspect (and fear) that we’ll see some video in the future…

Finally, after a great day out on the Bay, we capped off the day with a historical event on our managed services platform to support President Obama’s speech from Cairo.  You can see a number of screenshots and feedback on Facebook by going here.

President Obama on ConnectSolutions

A great week, and there’s a few days left!

That is really what I am going talk about here.  That fun little menu choice “Organize pods” located under the Pods menu in the main UI of your Connect meeting room.  Here you can not only “Delete” content, “Select Unused” content but “Rename” content and renaming things can help Hosts and Presenters alike in a meeting room.  By default content you have loaded in the share pod is listed in alphabetical order but often I (and more often than not someone using my room or co-presenting with me) want to have things displayed in a logical order that matches the presentation I have outlined on paper or the order in which I have the content and presentation ordered in my mind.

I have found the best way is to go into the “Organize pods” dialog box, select the content, select “Rename” and add a #1 or #2 and so on to the front of the content items; especially useful if your PowerPoint files have similar names of titles or if you have multiple presenter or speakers. This forces the numbered ppt files to appear at the top of the list in the Share pod when you load them using the “What do you want to share? - Documents” accordion menu.  I also tend to put a blank space, or two, in front of any file that I use in the share pod that might serve as the first item, welcome slide or such item that needs to be the first thing attendees see when they enter that layout. This is especially useful when someone else in using the room and making the same or similar presentation or if you have a newbie whose comfort level with Connect is not as high as yours.

So simple yet and yet so easy a way to keep your content, your presenter’s content and all the various files you upload into the share pod organized.  So don’t just upload “stuff” and have it listed there take a few seconds and put some order to the material. It may save you minutes down the road and make all your meetings all the better.

There’s a helpful discussion on managing secure web conferencing with Acrobat Connect Pro available on the connectusers.com site available here:

Topic of the Month, April 09, Secure and Scalable Web Conferencing - Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro User Community

From the site:  “With an ever growing list of security standards and compliance initiatives that IT applications must adhere to, deciding exactly how to set up your Connect Pro account can be a confusing. Similarly, as your implementation grows so do the demands on providing a platform that is going to scale with increased usage. This month we’ve decided to focus on helping Connect Pro administrators configure your deployments to best meet these increasing demands and provide tips and tricks for end users on managing meeting security.”

I’ve had the opportunity to work with Peter Ryce for over six years.  During that time, I’ve seen him do more incredible things with Acrobat Connect Pro than I can possibly count, but until yesterday, I had never seen him in a suit…  I hope this doesn’t rattle the Acrobat Connect Pro community to much!

Prior to working with ConnectSolutions, Cyrus was a Collaborations Architect where he managed on number of installations of Adobe Connect Pro for the NIH (National Institutes of Health), DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency), RAND  Corporation, General Dynamics, and the DOE (Department of Energy). A specialist in streaming media and video teleconferencing networks, Cyrus designed and integrated video communication networks for the NIH,   NARA (National Archives and Records Administration), and the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission). His career in the IP based communication arena started in 1998 when he was put in charge of integrating the NIH’s first PACS (Picture Archiving and Communications System)  for the Clinical Centers Department of Radiology. Cyrus holds a bachelors degree from George Mason University, Masters Certification from George Washington University, and currently resides in Los Angeles.

Welcome Cyrus!

MeetingPulse - Real-time Metrics on your Desktop

MeetingPulse: A desktop application providing easy access to your Connect Pro meetings, reports, and notifications (toasts) when users enter any of your meeting rooms

ConnectMonitor Screenshot

ConnectMonitor:  A desktop application that pings your server using a specific monitoring point to verify all is well.

A pleasant beginning to every meeting!

QuickMeeting:  A pleasant beginning to every meeting!  See a tutorial on connectusers.com available here.

Looking for something else?  Have a great idea, but don’t know much about how to make it work with Connect Pro?  Drop us a line in the comments and we’ll follow-up!

If you did not know you can double-click the title bar of any pod and re-name the pod.  Simple, select the title bar with your mouse, move your mouse over the current title and double click to highlight the current title, hit the delete key or just start typing a new title.  Okay but why? This question is what you may be asking right now so let me explain.

Pods are great for their functionality and performance in a meeting but they are kind of generic.  Share, Attendee list, File share and so on.  If you take the time to think about the nature of your meeting room and the context of how it will be used for communication and collaboration by your attendees you can make the room perhaps a little easier for newbies to understand and maybe easier to navigate for those in a hurry.  Is your meeting live?  Is your meeting going to be recorded? Is your meeting room open 24×7 for people to enter?  Are the attendees new to the Connect Meeting room experience?  Let’s take the scenario of new employee hires who are also new Connect users entering a meeting room for the first time for an employee orientation session.

As you know a participant in the meeting room sees things a bit differently than meeting Hosts or Presenters and as participants they cannot use all the pods the same way so right from the beginning a newbie might start clicking on the pods just to see what happens.  If you were to re-label some of the pods they could provide some guidance even if you are not in the meeting room or have walked away for a moment before your meeting begins.  I often re-label the chat pod “Type your questions here” so that it is obvious what you can do with this pod during the meeting.  I also add or enter into the chat pod the text “Welcome” and “Please type any question, concerns or comments you have during a meeting into this pod”.

The share pod is another pod that is great to re-name or label.  If you have a photograph of yourself or the presenter for the session upload that into the meeting room and then re-label the pod with their name, title, credentials or contact information.  In this scenario I often see people re-label the pod “Representative”, “Live Representative” or “Customer representative” I think you get the idea here.  Label this picture whatever makes sense in the context of your meeting room and makes a personal connection to the meeting attendees especially if you are not using the “Camera and Video” pod.  I also add#1 or #2 to the front of the name of any content I put in a meeting room that corresponds to the sequence of how that material is to be displayed.  This helps me keep things in order and if others use my room they can see the numbered lists too

The pod with the title that I change 99% of the time in every meeting when I use that pod is the “File Share” pod.  Why?  Well the share pod and file share pod both have the word share in their title but share content in entirely different ways.  The “Share” pod is a great way to upload specific file types or select a window, application or your desktop and broadcast that content out to all the attendees in the meeting room.  The “File Share” pod is a great way to distribute files of any type to anyone in the meeting room or even to those with access to the meeting archive.  I re-name the “File Share” the “Distribution pod”. Often giving it a much longer name like: “Distribution pod: select any of the files below by clicking on them and selecting the Save to my Computer button”.  You get the idea this is a nice way to provide direction to newbies in the meeting room and to anyone who may be accessing the meeting room archive long after the meeting has ended.

A fairly simple idea and concept that can provide guidance and instruction to meeting room attendees. You can also rename pods using the “Organize Pods…” menu at the bottom of the Pods drop-down menu. You can also rename layouts or create new layouts with the “Organize Layouts…” option under the Layouts drop-down menu.  The most important aspect of re-naming things is to keep the names contextual as to how they might be used in the meeting. Establish a naming convention and stick to it and in my opinion avoid “blank” or “no name” pods.  While possible it makes it real difficult to find the right pod if you close it especially if you have more than one blank pod.

So what’s in a name? A whole lot so use them wisely.