Webinar the World

Webinars are growing in popularity as a substitute for conferences this year, particularly as folks can't leave their offices these days due to cost and travel restrictions, so this sort of meeting will no doubt be on the increase.

I presented two this week for example, although it is weird presenting to an audience you cannot see.  Mind you, in some ways, that's a good thing.

Anyways, the first webinar was on global banking trends for an American partner website: Banker Stuff.

This is the first in a series of webinars looking at Global Trends outside the USA, and this one focused upon the big things that are happening across Europe, Asia and Africa.

Those of you who read this blog regularly will be familiar with the stories but, if you want them to have a bit more life then you can watch and hear the hour-long webinar by clicking here.

Alternatively, you can view and download the presentation here:

The other webinar presentation this week was for the video conferencing firm TANDBERG, who have a new compliance tool based upon video networking.

I wrote a paper about this which you can get from their website, as well as watching the video-enabled webinar: Using Video as a Compliance Tool (live from 15:00 UK on June 5th).

As you know, I'm a fan of video with various blogs about this.  It also appeared as a theme in my last book, and I regularly debate the subject.  The last time was at the Financial Services Club in September, with an in-depth white paper available for those interested.

The reason I keep harping on about it, is because I believe it will completely re-engineer our industry from a product, service and delivery viewpoint.  This will be as revolutionary as the telephone call centre or internet has been for banking services.  That's why I'm happy to engage with firms that deliver this sort of technology.

Mind you, this one was a bit of a strange experience, as TANDBERG installed one of their video units in my house over general broadband.  The result is very good quality, even though the technical guys said it was over low speed networking.

Interestingly, it made me think that the quality was as good as the old video conference service we used at the large multinational I worked for until 2002.  This firm had a massive investment in videoconference services for each major office around the world, averaging about $1 million per location.

The TANDBERG unit costs a few hundred dollars as an add-on to my home PC.

This really rubs in the point that video is here and now and, within a few months (not years), it will be as cheap to add on an HD-PC video experience as it is to buy a laptop.

Get with it!

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