If you’ve been watching our Twitter stream, then you already know that we love to tweet out Fuze Meeting recordings and webinars that would be interesting to a larger audience (so if you have any, let us know!). For one of the coolest uses of Fuze Meeting we’ve seen so far, check out a webinar in action as the Burning Man community (YES **THAT** BURNING MAN) presents their annual Desert Arts Preview.

https://www.fuzemeeting.com/replay_meeting/9dcd7ce9/1661461

A little background:

Burning Man is an annual art event and temporary community based on radical self expression and self-reliance in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. But that’s putting it lightly. One visit to their Image Gallery (http://images.burningman.com) will leave you floored with the amount of care and time put into creating these visual interpretations of structures, vehicles, apparel and more.

Considered by many to be the most notable event outside of the actual trip to the desert, the Burning Man team hosts the Desert Artist Preview. At this event, groups that have been selected to receive honorarium money to work on their projects present a series of lectures where physical and virtual attendees will get a sneak peak of notable projects in the works – often giving a snapshot of the first brick and mortar images of what will be the visual centerpieces of 50,000+ person event all with an overarching spirit of collaboration and self-expression.

Burning Man has been a happy Fuze Meeting customer since March and has been using it for team meetings and event planning. We’re thrilled to have them as Fuze enthusiasts!

This post was written by our VP of Marketing and Web Sales, Rafael Alenda! While he revels in all things “SaaS and cloud”, his other interests include taxiing his 3 sons between sporting events, whipping up batches of paella and jetting off to Spain to visit his family!

When we introduced video conferencing into Fuze Meeting earlier this year, it wasn’t only our product offering that changed.  The way our sales team sold the product was also fundamentally altered.  We here at Fuze Meeting are in an enviable situation where we use the product we’re selling to…well, sell the product…makes sense?

Most inside sales teams use online meeting services to show the software they’re selling or take a prospect through a sales pitch; slide by agonizing slide.

For the first year or so, our sales reps would invite interested prospects into a Fuze Meeting, give some background on our company, highlight some benefits of our service and then close the deal. It was slightly impersonal but it worked.

By adding the ability to have meeting hosts and attendees see each other during the demo, the client/prospect relationship became more personal, fun and effective.  Another benefit was receiving immediate feedback from the audience we are trying to engage with and communicate to.

Our sales reflect the excitement that video conferencing has brought to our solution and we  find our prospects are blown away as soon as they see the video panels pop up in the meeting.  Demos are no longer routine and depend more on the interaction between the sales rep and the prospect.  So good sales reps can be more productive and, better yet, more successful.  Saying “No” is far easier over the phone than it is when you’re face-to-face but our experience has shown us that demos don’t even get to the answer part…prospects come out and tell us “I have to have this!”

Has your sales team recently started using video conferencing to sell?  How has it changed your approach?  What has been the impact to the company?

At FuzeBox, we pride ourselves in being the web conferencing solution to a myriad of different types of businesses and professions – everyone from after school tutors to board members of Fortune 50 companies utilize our solution for its ease of use and feature rich platform, but when the Mendocino Film Festival, one the fastest growing festivals of its kind, came calling we knew we were in for a new type of challenge.

Recently the Director of the Mendocino Film Festival, Michael Fox, reached out to us with a dilemma: the director/lead actor of the  award-winning movie The Athlete AKA Atletu/Atleten (about Ethiopian marathon runner Abebe Bilkia) was scheduled to attend the festival and host a Q&A session after his screening. However, he was now being called to NYC to accept yet another award for his astonishing film.

The Director, Rasselas Lakew was distraught! How could he be in two places at once to promote his film?  (Enter Fuze Meeting, stage left)

With only days before the scheduled Q&A session between the Director and his adoring Mendocino fan base – the Fuze Meeting Team sprang into action! By the following afternoon we had sent Rasselas an iPad2 and had him trained on our app!

And…it went swimmingly! Check out this picture of Rasselas as he accepted the award for best narrative feature, from 3,011 miles away!

And how did they think it went? Well, we’ll let them speak for themselves!

“Fuze Meeting forged a connection between the filmmaker and the audience for an intimate Q&A session in a unique and authentic way,”  declared Michael Fox, Executive Director of the Mendocino Film Festival.

“The Video conference I had via Fuze was extremely user friendly…it was easy to set up and it’s connection was fast and effective.  The whole experience was phenomenal” said Lakew Rasselas director of The Athlete.

We love our jobs here at FuzeBox and getting to hear feedback like that from a new user makes the race to be the best in web conferencing that much more rewarding!

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This blog post was brought to you by guest blogger Floyd Tucker! When not rocking out with his band or whisking off to Mendocino to facilitate cross-country meetings , you can find him training new corporate clients on the wonders of Fuze Meeting.

Interactive marketing agency Flickerbox finds success using Fuze Meeting for project management and connecting remote teams.

Founded in 1999, Flickerbox is a full-service interactive marketing agency that blends marketing methodologies with strong visual design and progressive technical expertise to create websites, lead generation tools, and product demos for companies in the B2B technology space.

The need:

One month into the company’s WebEx subscription, Flickerbox CEO Paul J. Martinez noticed that their new web conferencing software had virtually no adoption. It turns out the development and production teams had such a hard time figuring out how to use it, that they eventually gave up on web meetings all together. Needing to unite his geographically-remote teams, the company signed up with Fuze Meeting and the online collaboration commenced.

The solution:

The team was immediately drawn to the intuitive user interface and feature-rich product offering. “There are plenty of independent services that work fine,” says Martinez.  “But having them all in one place makes it a lot easier to make impromptu meetings happen.” Being able to combine audio, content upload and desktop sharing meant that Flickerbox was able to cancel their conference bridge and WebEx subscription and streamline all their collaboration needs into one product.

With this new, all-in-one solution in their back pocket, the teams changed the way they did business.

Development & Production – The Flickerbox development team is spread between two offices – one in San Francisco and one in Portland – and they use Fuze Meeting to keep their remote team connected. Frequently, the development team all joins a Fuze Meeting together to view a webpage-in-process with desktop sharing and discuss progress of client projects. They use the synchronous screen sharing to test functionality and ensure they are always on the same page. And, adding new definition to “content on the fly,” the development team has even been known to snap a shot of a sketch on a napkin and immediately load it to a meeting from their mobile phones!

The production group uses Fuze Meeting to present to external clients. They use content upload to share their creative work and share desktops to test functionality and collaborate on changes to client sites.

Being heard:

One of Flickerbox’s favorite things about Fuze Meeting is the robust offering of audio options. The Fuze-In option – dialing meeting attendees into the meeting directly from the web interface – has been a particularly successful feature for the team. “In our old system – no one could ever figure out how to pull somebody into a call,” Says Martinez. “You were on a call and somebody would go run to another phone and call the person and say ‘OK if you’re having trouble getting into the call, here’s what you need to do.’” Now, a few keystrokes into the meeting interface, and they can guarantee that tardiness or technical know-how won’t keep a vital participant from joining a meeting. And since the Portland team doesn’t even have one office phone, the Skype integration along with the rest of the Fuze Meeting suite helps make long distance collaboration almost as seamless and drawing on the back of a napkin at a coffee shop.

Last week, the Sass & cloud enthusiasts from DreamSimplicity came by the Fuze Box offices. They had a chat with our CEO Jeff about our company, and Community Manager Kristen (well, me…) gave them a tour of the office and a product demo!

Check out the video, and give some love to the folks at DreamSimplicity (@DreamSimplicity) and our fabulous interviewer Matt (@MattyChilds). They did a great job!

DreamSimplicity @ Fuze Box from DreamSimplicity on Vimeo.

With our iPad app flying off the virtual shelves like the need-to-have business app it is, we’ve had a strong uptick of people joining our live daily demo which gives us great insight to the types of ways that people use Fuze Meeting. And we thought Grandpa Grumpy was just so very interesting!

Jay Norman AKA Grandpa Grumpy designs beautiful children’s books. (You can check them out here.) He actually started designing them because with him in the US and his family in the UK, his grandsons don’t see much of their (self proclaimed) grumpy grandpa…so he designs books to let them know he’s thinking about them.

And… he’s excited that Fuze Meeting HD capabilities will allow him to collaborate online with other artists, designers and authors to share images and ideas!

We’re thrilled to do our part to help Grandpa Grumpy reach his overseas family and help launch his budding business.

This one’s not about web conferencing. Sorry. I know you were dying for new tips and tricks on how to hijack your Fuze Meeting account to transfer large files for free (it’s coming!).

But this post is about people. As you know, a company is about the people – and today this company really knocked it out of the park.

Our web designer is leaving to move back home with his family in Colorado. (Yes, we’re hiring) And he came by to say farewell one last time. And you know what, in under an hour, our office came together and pulled off something remarkable. We’d taken up a collection for (quite a nice) gift, spun a card around the office and MacGyver’ed a full gift wrap out of 2 sq. feet of wrapping paper.

And what did it take? Just a little efficiency and a passion to get something done.  Granted, I can think of *something else* that helps you be more efficiency. But I promised this post wasn’t about online meetings or the crazy amounts of time you could save with a little Fuze Meeting in your life.

But no, no. This one’s about the people. And hey, don’t you want to work with a company who can pull it together in 45 minutes to give someone a fabulous send off?

We thought so.

Larry BoBarry (may or may not be his actual last name), our live demo guru, spends his week with a headset slung over his noggin, a mouse welded to his palm and a hankering to show people about the wonders of Fuze Meeting.

Those of us who sit an ear shot away have heard some pretty interesting things coming out of the demos, and the we thought WAIT…let’s ask Larry some questions!

How long have you been demoing for Fuze?

I’ve been doing the live demos here at Fuze for about 7 months.

How many demos would you say that is?

More than I can count even with my shoes off.

What is the thing that people are most confused about when they get into a Fuze Meeting?

How content is shared.

Care to set them straight?

Fuze has two basic methods of sharing content: the classic “let me show you my screen” and the “upload your file to the Fuze Meeting system.”

“Let me show you my screen” AKA desktop sharing is great for showing websites and custom applications or programs.

“Uploading your file” AKA content sharing allows for higher quality, collaboration and much faster access.  Hosts and presenters should use this method if they want to share: PowerPoint, Word docs, HD videos, audio files or high res images.

What’s the strangest thing that’s ever happened on a demo?

The was one customer who thought he’d discovered a bug – he was sharing his own screen, but was seeing his own screen within that screen, causing an infinite loop – kind of like holding two mirrors together.  Turns out he had accidentally opened two browsers and joined from both so he was essentially viewing his own screen share (and screen within the screen share (and screen within that screen within the screen share and so on)).

Just this afternoon, some of the team here were in a Fuze Meeting webinar and I noticed almost all the callers were on Skype. That said, either they were home alone, annoying the rest of their office with loud voices emanating from their computers, or on a headset. And since I’ve done my best to swear off telecommuting, I’ve been on a constant search for the *perfect* in-office web conferencing headset experience.

I’m not in love with my headset choice YET (Freetalk Everyman Headset – more on that later) – but 4 headsets in the last 3 months make me somewhat of an expert on headset rejection – so here’s a short list of features to consider when finding an online meeting headset solution.

#1 Connection

Headset rejection #1 was because, foolish me, didn’t realize that not all computers have a mic jack. Headphone/mic jacks and USB connections both work really well in terms of sound, but you’ll probably have to mess with the input/output settings a bit if you use a USB connection. On the other hand, all computers have a place to shove a USB cable, so you won’t be stuck there like a cross-eyed buffoon staring at your headphone jack in the headphone port with your mic jack dangling of the edge of your laptop. (Sore subject)  My recommendation: go with the USB.

Found yourself with the double-jack and a computer that won’t work with it? Don’t worry – they have converters and (let’s be honest) it’s probably not a bad idea to have a stereo headphone converter handy in case you only have your iPhone set with you.

#2 The Boom Boom

Chances are, you don’t really notice that your headset mic isn’t working for you until you start getting annoyed with all the ‘could you speak up’ complaints. Finally, someone had the good sense to suggest that the problem was my mic and headset #2 was out the door. I switched from an on-cord mic to a boom mic, and the audio complaints went away. A plus side of the boom mic? Feeling like a pop star and asking people if they’d like fries with that. My Recommendation: Boom

#3 Headphones

Headset #3 got the boot because it only had a speaker on one ear, and I just decided I’m a surround sound girl.

But – there’s all TYPES of headphones. In-ear buds, foam headphones, and the very intense gamer-style foam padded headphones. This is a personal choice, but, for me…the buds fall out and the gamer headsets do too good a job of cancelling out the noise. I work in an office, so I actually like the ambient noise and currently use the Freetalk Everyman Headset that SKYPE suggests, but…I’m not in love.

Why, you ask? They’re a bit flimsy and they only come in black. I’m still on the hunt for the perfect headset and I gladly take suggestions!

Note: Fuze doesn’t necessarily endorse the products shown or mentioned, but – if you’re looking for them here are the links: Input/output Converter, Stereo Converter.

With throngs of engineers camped out behind their computers like it was going out of style, the engineer folk are turning out technology and applications faster than the blogosphere can keep up with them. So, then what we get is a world where things exist even before they have names. THEN, amidst all the chatter, a name ARISES. And this one really caught my eye.

The Term: Hybrid Meeting

The definition: A meeting where there are some participants sitting together in a meeting room AND some participants are attending the meeting remotely via web conference. Think of it as a mash up between virtual and in-person meetings.

And when you think about it, most of your online meetings (especially the important ones) are probably just this. And while we’ve offered tips (and more tips) on optimizing your meeting for web conferencing, they weren’t specifically directed to the very frequently occurring hybrid situation.

However, you don’t need a list of tips this time. When presenting in a hybrid meeting, just ask yourself one question: Could I still give this presentation if I was sitting down?

I don’t suggest you forsake your well practiced hand motions and charming smiles. I’m not even suggesting that you *do* stay in your seat. I’m just noting that, if you’re going to get up, be aware that the people attending your meeting virtually don’t know what “this here line” is. Just like on a web conference, use your annotation tools to highlight what you’re talking about…or go old school and just use your words “I hereby give you: the PURPLE line.”

Got any tips for navigating the hybrid meeting? Comment!

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