• It is a meeting room
• It is online
• It just works

Recently an event I was involved in as a speaker had a problem. A speaker had a last minute problem travelling to the event. In conference land this is usually a crisis situation. The conference organiser called on me to see if I could do a second presentation at the conference, but was concerned as the speaker who was to travel had been ‘ticked’ as one they wanted to see by a lot of delegates. I would very much be a ‘surrogate band’ and people might not welcome the change in running order (particularly if they’d paid mainly to see that presentation).

Being a cheeky bugger I dropped a quick email to Joe Garde in Onlinemeetingrooms.com to see if he might be able to help. A few additional facts are important here. I emailed him around 18:30 on the Friday of a Bank Holiday weekend. The conference started on Monday in the UK. Monday was a Bank Holiday in Ireland (where Joe is based) and the speaker was due to present on Tuesday afternoon.

This left a window of Monday to sort something out that we could be confident would work.

Joe phoned me on Saturday morning and we discussed options (while I furiously texted the conference organiser in the UK to let him know what was happening). With Joe’s help a clear plan formed… we’d use the OnlineMeetingRoom system to video link the speaker into London from Dublin. Ideally we’d need a wired broadband connection, but Joe and I were confident we could make it work.

Over to London with me… Monday afternoon we did a test (24hrs before the presentation). Over the hotel’s wifi network. No wired broadband available…

Worked perfectly. No fuss or hassle, no installing equipment (I had a webcam in my bag and the roadies… sorry AV professionals took care of figuring out the hook-up to the PA). The roadies liked it so much they wanted to get in contact with Joe as they do a lot of conferences and seminars that it could add value to… I do hope they buy it.

Fast forward to the day of the presentation… room full of people, nervous conference organiser and conference chairperson… me very calm and confident because I knew we were using good kit that just works.

…Presenter comes on from Dublin, audio good, video good, presentation content good. Slide timings a little off because I was running the powerpoint in London to keep as much bandwidth for video and audio as possible and got distracted by how well things were going.

…everyone happy. Kudos for everyone all round.

Looking back, I could have done one or two presentational things better but the kit worked. That was the main thing.

I work in Telco and I’ve seen a fair share of ‘cutting edge’ tools that just don’t cut the mustard when the shit is hitting the fan. My experience with the e-touch Online Meeting room has always been excellent. When the chips were down the tool just worked. And Joe helped out co-ordinating on the Dublin end to make sure that the presentation went as smoothly as possible, which on a Bank Holiday was support above and beyond the call of duty.

It is so straightforward even my pointy-haired boss could use it…

Now that’s good kit that just works.