Thanks to web conferencing it’s possible to conduct virtual meetings anywhere people have access to the internet. Web conferencing software is a great tool to deliver presentations or demonstrations (what we like to call communicating one on many). If however, the objective is to collaborate and harness the intelligence of the group to generate solutions or solve problems, web conferencing alone doesn't guarantee a productive meeting. Effective idea generation and problem solving require more than simple polling or chatting. FacilitatePro turns web conferences into high performance events by enabling highly productive group participation and idea exchange.

FacilitatePro helps you run high performance web conferences by:

• Switching the dynamic from 80% sitting and listening to 80% participating and contributing.
• An electronic meeting room with customizable agenda with topic links
• Going beyond a simple moderated Q&A or polls with a shared interactive flip chart allowing everyone to see, build on and even respond to each other’s questions.
• Giving everyone a say with simultaneous brainstorming and voting.
• Managing the group dynamic with options for both anonymity and attribution.
• Keeping participants on their toes (or at the edge of their seats) with frequent requests for group input and interaction.
• Going beyond brainstorming with categorization, prioritization and decision-making tools to understand opinions, preferences and votes of all participants.
• Starting the conversation ahead of time with asynchronous input to prepare participants and focus the real-time agenda.
• Recording action plans, responsibilities and timeline so that everyone confirms what has been decided.
• Documenting the meeting output for a complete record available to everyone.

In the words of the Facilitator…

“We’ve been using a web-conferencing service for many years and it works very well for presentations, simple Q&As and quick polls. But for generating quality thinking, especially with all of the distractions that people have at their desks like cell phones, email and text messaging, it’s challenging to keep people’s attention. FacilitatePro helped us switch the emphasis from pushing information out to a group of listeners to pulling information and ideas in from participants. Now we tend to distribute information such as presentations and reports ahead of time. We may start out with a brief recap of the major elements and then jump in to interactive brainstorming or idea generation using FacilitatePro. Everyone’s ideas are captured on the shared electronic flip chart so that we can all see and discuss what is there. Sometimes we use anonymous brainstorming to open up discussion; other times we attribute contributions so that we know that everyone is engaged and participating. The voting tools allow us to understand group priorities and quickly come to consensus on issues that use to take an age. By concentrating conference time on interaction rather than presentations we keep calls short and people are more focused and engaged.”

Want to know more about how to make your web conferences more effective? Contact us to set up a free demo of FacilitatePro web meeting tools.

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