TechNO Expo

Audio-visual products pavilion

Ryan Sieler
Systems engineer, Tierney Brothers, Inc., Minneapolis

Tierney Brothers offers Netbriefings Webcast software and support ser-vices, which allow you to make video files of presentations. The video could include imbedded PowerPoint slides or audio clips and can be streamed live on line or accessed on demand, when it’s convenient for the audience. Customers can even chat live, record the conversation, and then e-mail it to others.

All you need for this service is a PC or laptop, a standard Web cam, a microphone, and a high-speed Internet connection. Netbriefings takes care of all the software. It’s a subscription-based service and pricing depends on how many people you have using it; there is a license fee for each person. Once you log in with a user name and password, you can contact members of your group that are also logged in, for a live discussion.

It’s almost like using an instant messenger service such as American Online Instant Messenger. You can meet using the Web cam feature with video and audio, rather than typing your messages, which captures the all-important nonverbal communication as well.

Dave Ewing
Director of sales, Dascom Systems Group, LLC, Woodbury

The Accordent Capture Station’s recording and archiving capabilities are especially appealing to sales-based businesses with outlying sales personnel. The system uses IP bandwidth, which typically costs less than satellite communications. Accordent comes with software to assist in creating rich media, IBM Lenonvo hardware, and video and VGA capture cards. It records and synchronizes audio, video, and data from projectors, smartboards, and laptops, and instantly makes an online multimedia presentation.

Saving money on travel and efficiency are important, but how do you know your sales personnel are actually watching the training video that you posted to your Web site? Now, managers can track not only if the employee opened the video file, but they can also track an employee’s interaction with training material.

For instance, Accordent can track a sales rep that accesses an archived new-product demonstration via his laptop or PC. Once the file is open and running, Accordent will interject questions that the viewer couldn’t answer correctly unless he was watching the video.

The Accordent archives of audio, video, or PowerPoint files are searchable by keyword.