Murphy's Law Strikes a Webconference! part 2

preparations for the big event

When we left our adventurers last month their course had been set, and all were moving ahead, blissfully unaware of the disaster that lay ahead. The valiant leader and his apprenticed assistant did all that they knew to do…

There were two major elements of the November, 2001, meeting, each of which required an extraordinary amount of planning and coordination. The first was logistics; the speakers were busy people, located in four states. The chapter, having little previous experience with VIP speakers, worked its way through unfamiliar territory, on the way learning much about protocol and travel arrangements.

The second was the production itself, which had two components - the live presentation and the virtual presentation to be made by webconference. In each case, the chapter began planning early, many decisions being made early in 2001.

Selecting speakers and making arrangements went fairly well; speakers were confirmed by July. A few communication problems occurred in the weeks before the meeting, but everyone arrived on time without loss of luggage.

Preparations for the webconference also went along smoothly - or so it seemed. The first problem was choosing a service provider to broadcast the meeting over the Internet. Our fearless leader, relying on information from a year or more earlier, had a particular provider in mind - one that had offered free service for webconferences with a limited number of participants. Unfortunately, the free service was no longer available - a few thousand dollars was the going price for basic service.

After discovering that CSI had used ECI Conference Call Services for its Audio Exchange series, I had several conversations with their sales and technical people. ECI offered webconferencing at the rate of seventy-two cents per minute per connection for both audio and video (over the Internet), or $43.20 per hour per participant. That would allow us to offer a two-hour program for less than $100, not a bad deal!

Not wanting to leave anything to chance, we did everything we could think of to make sure there would be no problems.

ECI requires that software be downloaded to each computer, so each of the presenters did so before coming to the meeting.
I tested the service both at work and at home, where my 56K modem often connects at only 38K to 48K.
Each presenter brought his own notebook computer; we had a total of five compatible computers available.
We had two LCD projectors.
I downloaded the thirty-eight page User Guide, read it, and brought it to the meeting.
I called ECI several times to discuss questions.
The hotel's professional staff was to provide audio equipment - microphones, speakers, mixers, and telephone connections - and be available during the presentation.
I scheduled a trial run on site the morning of the meeting to make sure everything was working as planned.

While the leader and his apprentice forged excitedly on in anticipation of the glories that lay ahead, the Dark Lord Murphy and his evil minions prepared strange and unutterable horrors…

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Material from CSI Chapter newsletters used with permission.