Web conferencing is used to conduct live meetings or presentations over the Internet.
Advantages
- travel at lightspeed - webconferences can substitute for f2f meetings when travel costs would be large.
- shares slides, graphics and other images in realtime during the conference. Some tools have an on-line 'whiteboard' that facilitates interactive graphical 'scribbling' by the group.
- best used in tandem with a conference call.
- The technology is scalable - it can go from a 1-1 to a mass meeting with several hundreds of participants.
- Convenience - commercial services such as IBM/Lotus Quickplace, Webex, and others provide realtively easy to use and relatively reasonably priced services.
- Can include community workplaces, threaded discussions, news streams, meeting agendas.
Disadvantages
- lack of f2f and other non-verbal communication (unless the technology includes video conferencing.)
- services can be pricey for small businesses
- session data / questions / discussion may not be retained after the conference is over.
Best Practices
- webconferences are best used for demonstrations and training where new-potential users can see processes happening in real time.
- when used for meetings, get participants to print out the agenda and calling instructions beforehand.
For details see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_conferencing