Do It Yourself Events: Part 1 - Setting Up and Building a Connect Pro Meeting

Running an online event is similar to other types of events. It requires some thought and preparation before the event, some coordination behind the scenes during the event, and some follow-up after. Below we will take a look at some methods and tips on how to set up a successful Acrobat Connect Pro Web Conference.

You will need to create a Connect Pro Meeting, but before you start you should consider some important factors about your event. Think about who your audience is and where they are located. Will they be attending mainly on high speed connections, or will they be on a slower connection? Are they based in your country, or are they international? Will you be sharing only slides, or will there be rich content such as live demos and videos? All of these factors will play a role in how you setup and manage your event.

Meeting Prep

Setting up your meeting can be the most important step in having a successful event. Before you create a Connect Pro meeting room, check with your account administrator to see what the participant limit is. If you are planning for a large meeting you might need to create a seminar room, or have your account administrator create one for you.
When you create a Connect Pro Meeting room, there are some things to consider:

1. Name: This will be the title of your meeting room. If you set up an event that will need different titles each time it is used, you can always change the title of the room before the event.
2. Custom URL: This is how most participants will enter your event. Choose a unique URL that is specific to the event or generic if you plan on re-using the room for many events. This cannot be changed once set.
3. Select Template: Some accounts might have special templates set up for events. If you create many events, you can also set up your own template. If unsure, choose the default meeting template. For more information on templates, check out this blog entry:
   http://blogs.adobe.com/acrobatconnect/2007/05/discovering_templates.html
4. Access: Who is attending your event? If the event is internal to your company and contains sensitive information, choose the option with, "Only registered users may enter the room." This will limit your attendees to authorized participants, presenters, or event hosts, and will not allow any last minute guest access.
   If this event will have participants without a Connect Pro account choose, "Anyone who has the URL for the meeting room can enter the room." This option will allow anyone to enter the room without requesting entry. Also, you can choose "Only registered users and accepted guests may enter the room." This option lets all invited participants in, but also allows you to accept guests into the room when they request entry. You can always change these options after you have set up the meeting and even change them when the meeting is in session.
5. Audio Conference Settings: Setting up the audio for your event is a critical step to the success of the event. Depending on your audience and presenters, you have a few choices when setting up the audio for your event:
• VoIP only: This option (using the Voice Pod) is the least expensive (free) and most seamless way to run an event. It only requires your presenters to have a USB headset or microphone attached to his or her computer. You can have more than one presenter speak at a time, and all participants can listen to the event over his or her computer speakers. When you record your event, the audio will also be included in the recording when you use VoIP.
• One thing to consider: Participants on slower connections (including international) might have a few short drop offs with the audio. When setting up your event with this option, choose, "Do not include any audio conference with this meeting."
• Integrated Telephony: Connect Pro can be integrated with a variety of telephony providers. Integrating an audio conference with your event allows you to control the teleconference through the attendee list. You can see who is speaking, mute participants, and control the speaker's volume. The teleconference information will be included in the meeting, and participants can also have the teleconference dial them. Also, the meeting recording will integrate the audio from the teleconference.

Things to consider: Some teleconference systems will support a fixed number of participants on the call. Calls with many participants can be expensive based on the teleconference setup. International attendees might have to dial a toll number in order to join the teleconference. When setting up your event with this option, choose, "Include this audio conference with this meeting." If you don't have this option, you may need to set up your profile with your teleconference information. Contact your Connect Pro administrator for more details.
• Other teleconference: If you don't have a teleconferencing system that is integrated with Connect Pro, you can still set up a successful event. The teleconference information and controls will not appear within the Connect Pro meeting, but you still can enter any dial-in instructions in the meeting for your participants to follow.
• Things to consider: The meeting recording will not feature any audio unless you use the, "Record Audio from Speakerphone" option. When this feature is selected, Connect Pro will capture the microphone input on the computer that selects this option. If your laptop's built-in microphone is close to a speakerphone, this option may capture a decent audio recording. For this option, choose either, "Do not include any audio conference with this meeting" or, "Include other audio conference with this meeting" and enter the teleconference information. Note that this information will not show up in the actual meeting, just the meeting summary on your Connect Pro central homepage.
• Combined VoIP and Teleconference: This is a more advanced method of reaching your audience with the event audio. By offering both VoIP and teleconference options, you can cover all audience types: slow connections, international, and those without computer speakers. This method captures the audio into the recording as well.
• There are several ways to accomplish this method:
  • The least-sophisticated, but sure- fire method: Presenters can dial into the teleconference AND use the voice pod with a headset/microphone.
  • A method that is more sophisticated, but easier for multiple presenters: Moderator calls into the teleconference and uses a device such as a THAT-2 to send the teleconference audio into the computer's line in. With this method, presenters only need to dial into the teleconference, and the moderator will broadcast audio over Connect Pro using the voice pod.

Adding Participants, Presenters, and Hosts


6. You can find participants to invite by searching for them in the "select participants" screen. Once you select a participant, click on the add button to include them in your meeting room. You can also add groups that your Connect Pro administrator has created. If you set your meeting access to, "Only registered users may enter the room" in #4, you will want to make sure you add all of the participants who will be attending to your list.
7. If you plan to have more than one presenter or host, use the permissions buttons to grant host or presenter privileges to select users in advance of the live meeting. Advance preparation ensures they that can login to the meeting even if it is on hold, and lets them prepare their content ahead of time. You can always add/remove participants or grant presenter/host permissions to others at anytime.

Now that you have effectively set up your meeting room, you can invite participants to your meeting by copying and pasting the URL which shows up on the Meeting Information page. If you made an error while setting up your meeting, you can always change the meeting name (1), access (4), audio conference settings (5), and meeting participants (6 & 7). To change any of these items, go back to the meeting information page and select Edit Information (8) or Edit Participants (9).

Building Your Meeting

Setting up your Connect Pro meeting room before your scheduled meeting time enables your event to run seamlessly and also provides a better experience for all participants. Below are some best practices for setting up your meeting room. You may even want to set up a meeting room template based on these settings:

Before building your Connect Pro Meeting room, adjust the settings for an optimized experience. In the meeting menu here are some settings to select:

1. Place Participants on hold: Check this option to lock your meeting while it is being prepared. Hosts and presenters can still enter but participants cannot. When you are ready to start this meeting, you can un-check this option. You can also customize the message participants will see when the meeting is on hold.
2. Optimize the room bandwidth: To accommodate a wide range of participants, set the bandwidth setting to DSL/Cable. If your audience will consist of participants inside your company's high speed network, you might get optimal performance by checking the LAN option.
3. Optimize Screen Sharing: Setting this option to "Fast Images" to get faster screensharing response time. This setting increases the frames per second of the screenshare, but still compresses the image for a quick response.
   If you are sharing highly detailed pictures or graphics, choose the High Quality option. This will slow down the response time a little, but will not compress the graphics.
   The low bandwidth setting is used for slower connections by compressing the image more and giving you less frames per second.
4. Room Screen Resolution: The optimal setting is 1024x768 to accommodate most of your audience. The other settings should be used for more customized experiences.

Now that you have adjusted the settings of your Connect Pro room, it is time to "build" it with all the necessary pods and layouts you will use in your event.

There are a few standard pods that you will most likely want in every layout:

1. Share Pod - This pod is the main focus for your presentations and demos and should be the largest pod on the stage.
2. Chat Pod - A chat pod is necessary for your participants to communicate with the presenters, or in some cases, other participants. Make sure to enable or disable private chat in the pod options menu depending on your preference for participant privacy. (Presenters and hosts will still be able to send private chats to any participant, and participants will be able to send chat messages to presenters only.)
3. Attendee List - The attendee list is your main point of control for promoting, demoting, and removing participants from the meeting. It also gives you a current count of attendees in the room and in some cases, lets you control the muting of microphones or telephones. It also gives you a view of participant feedback status. If you wish to keep the attendee list viewable to presenters only, you can move the pod to the presenter only area (See section on presenter only area below).
4. Note - During events, a note pod can display important information such as a meeting phone number, an agenda, instructions on how to view a demo in full screen, important links or email addresses. You can adjust the size or alignment of the text, and participants can copy and paste information from the note pod.
   Some other elements you will want to consider for your meeting room:
   
5. Chat vs. Q&A - A stand alone chat pod will let participants communicate during the meeting, but if you want to moderate the chat and questions, consider linking the Q&A pod to the main chat pod on the stage. When a participant enters a message in the linked chat pod, it will display the message in the Q&A pod instead of the chat pod. The Q&A pod is behind the scenes in the Presenter-Only area, so the rest of the participants will not see the chat message. Using the moderated chat feature keeps the chat pod uncluttered and free of any messages that you don't want showing up in your recordings or for everyone to read. Of course, you can always clear the content in any chat pod by using the pod options menu.
6. Layouts - When creating your event, it is important to organize your room by creating a separate layout for each major part of the event, or each time your meeting room will shift its focus. You can easily stage multiple presentations or other content throughout different layouts, and recordings index each layout change, making for easy review of your event during a recording.
   Creating, copying and organizing layouts before your event starts is easy and will make the event run smoothly. For a complete tutorial and more in-depth information, check out this article:
   http://www.connectusers.com/tutorials/2007/09/layouts/index.php
7. Presenter Only Area - During events, you will need to communicate with other presenters or hide certain information from participants. The best way to do this is to use the Presenter only area. To enable the presenter only area, go to Present> Show Presenter only area. In the presenter area, you can bring in a presenter chat pod to communicate, a note pod to take notes, or have information ready to copy and paste into the event. If you want to see your attendee list but hide it from the participants, the presenter only area is a good place to put it. Finally, if you want to moderate the chat and questions coming from the event, place the Q&A pod at the bottom of the presenter only area, underneath the layouts.

After you have built your room, there are many ways to enhance the appearance and event experience:

• Background - Enhance the visual appeal of your event by adding a custom background into your room. You can add a color gradient, a specific logo, or other interesting backgrounds. You can upload Jpeg files from your content library or Jpeg files that have been uploaded into the room. Meeting>Room Performance & Appearance>Room Background
• Polling Questions - If you want to get audience feedback during your event, try asking some polling questions before or after your presentation. Asking some basic questions about the audience can help you tailor your presentation.
• Presenter Head Shot - An easy way to enhance the look of your event is to include a head shot of the current presenter on the stage. This, or any other graphic, can be shared by bringing in another share pod to the stage and uploading the graphic from your content library or your computer.
• Camera - If your event involves a live video feed, the camera pod will let you display webcams or other live video content in the event.
• File Transfer - If you want the participants to download the presentation or more resources, upload those files into a File share pod. This will allow participants to download all of the files at their convenience, while still keeping them in the event. Also, these files will be available to download when watching the recorded session.
• Rename Pods - In addition to re-sizing and moving pods, you can double click on the title of any pod and rename it to your preferred title. This will help you keep track of your pods and also replace the cumbersome filenames of presentations when uploaded from your computer.

Setting up your Connect Pro meeting room with the methods above can prepare you for a successful event. In the next part of this three-part series, we'll take a look at holding an event rehearsal and how to effectively manage a Connect Pro meeting while the event is in session.