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RE: Gathering edits from several people - remote office locations
Subject:RE: Gathering edits from several people - remote office locations From:"Backer, Corinne" <CBacker -at- glhec -dot- org> To:"'TECHWR-L'" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 25 Jan 2000 13:24:40 -0600
Tracy,
I've never tried it, but Microsoft supposedly has a decent feature for an
email "conference call" meeting. It's called NetMeeting, I think it's a
component to be used with Outlook but it may be stand-alone. I really don't
know much about it, but thought it might solve some of your group review
problems. (Tangent: my company recently got conference phones called
SoundStationEX, brand name Polycom, that work absolutely great. I haven't
yet run into a limitation on number of people you can conference in - I've
done up to 6; you can add people at any time during the call; and the phones
come with little mutable "satellite" microphones that you can place around a
large table. If you can get someone to sign a purchase order, I think it
would make your life easier.)
Anyway, regarding NetMeeting, this is some info from Outlook online help:
//
About communicating on the Internet with NetMeeting
NetMeeting expands your communication capabilities with one or more people
to include both video and audio. With NetMeeting you can see what other
meeting members are doing, share applications and documents, chat and draw
with others on an electronic whiteboard, or transfer files.
Although you need a camera and video card in order to send video, you need
no extra equipment to view other people's video. You need sound hardware to
use the sound capability of NetMeeting. However, you can use NetMeeting even
without video or audio. NetMeeting is often used for desktop video
conferencing, including real-time document collaboration, technical support
in a helpdesk environment, training and distance learning, and conducting
remote meetings.
NetMeeting is a program that comes with Microsoft Internet Explorer. For
more information about this program, including Setup information, click the
NetMeeting button [**button shown here to download; takes you to this link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/netmeeting/ **] on the Online tab (on the
File menu, point to New, and then click Meeting Request) or see Microsoft
Internet Explorer documentation.
//
I haven't used NetMeeting, but I really like the other meeting features in
Outlook and find them to be very useful and reliable for scheduling people
and resources. We have about 750 employees at ~10 sites (Midwest,
California, Puerto Rico, etc.) and most everyone uses the meeting features.
(You do have to train people to enter all their meetings in Outlook, which
isn't difficult once people get used to it, and actually kind of grows on
you. Now I see people carrying around their Outlook calendar printouts
instead of their DayPlanners.) I know this sounds like a Microsoft
endorsement, but I only suggest NetMeeting because the other features in
Outlook have really worked so well for us. I still hold my sacred allegiance
to Frame. :D
Hope that helps.
CB
-----Original Message-----
From: Tracy Boyington [mailto:tracy_boyington -at- okvotech -dot- org]
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2000 8:48 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: Gathering edits from several people
> I've used the process that Beth described in her original post, and liked
it
> very much. It's thorough, but not for the faint-hearted - you have to be
> able to facilitate the meeting or things can go to hell in a handbasket
very
> quickly.
I use this process also. Unfortunately, my SMEs are spread out over the
state,
and it can be a challenge getting everyone together for a meeting. We've
tried
teleconferencing, but in our facility we can only have true back-and-forth
discussion with no more than 1 offsite location, so we're limited. I've had
success with having most of the SMEs in my group send in written comments,
and
then a few get together and discuss them. Right now we're trying to do it
*all*
by e-mail, but your SMEs have to be really motivated for this to work.
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