I remember back in October last year hearing Gartner's top strategic IT issues for 2008 I was not completely convinced that the Green IT theme was prime time, now I'm thinking how wrong I was.

Air travel costs are spiraling upwards, my partner recently bought a ticket for $300 to go to England, the tax was $800, $600 of the tax were actually hidden fuel surcharges. Many think the airline industry will never be the same again

Recently The Economist released an interesting report into managing your companys carbon footprint. In this report web conferencing was seen as the most popular way of carbon footprint reduction partly because the impact is so easy to measure (mental note to self, we should produce a syncswf to illustrate this) Further more we collectively have the opportunity for major improvements as 59% of organisations said almost no one works from home on a regular basis. Despite the enthusiasm for web conferencing companies appeared reluctant to mandate use of these technologies with 9% of organisations surveyed prepared to take that line with external meetings, this increased to 22% when related to internal meetings, however this figure rose to 46% when voluntary targets were proposed.

I plan to learn and share more of this area of using web conferencing to help reduce your personal and professional carbon footprint in the mean time I encourage everyone to play there part and help save the world one meeting at a time.

You may not know that we are also working to enrich and udpate the information we offer on adobe.com, at the Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro Resource Center. http://www.adobe.com/resources/acrobatconnect/.

Quick Start Guide: don't be fooled by the inconspicuous link to the Quick Start Guide. This is a little page with 11 demonstrations on some of the more common things you might want to do in your meeting, like encourage student participation in a virtual class, use breakout rooms for the first time, or customize your meeting room.

The other resources are divided by role - such as Administrator, Meeting Host, or Training Manager - and are updated on a monthly basis at minimum. Detailed presentations and demonstrations will really enhance your knowledge of managing and using all aspects of Connect Pro as well as Adobe Presenter.

Set aside some time once a month to take a look at what's new on the resource center. If you would really like to see something added, let us know here or on connectusers.com.

Randah

But the event itself doesn’t have to be an online meeting. For example, you may have used an online Connect Pro meeting as a webinar to launch your new product. You could certainly use Event Management to capture all the leads to that live event. But after the webinar you’d like to use the recording of the meeting to capture leads too – Connect Pro Event Management can help. This little tutorial shows you how you can set-up an event to capture leads from on-demand content such as a meeting recording. http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/p59921580/

First, if you haven’t been to our online user community – ConnectUsers.com – I highly encourage you to do so. We launched it in September of 2007. There has been quite a bit of activity on our forums, and there a number of tutorials available for you there. It’s a great place to see how others are using Connect Pro and to gain access to expertise from other users, Connect partners and the Connect Pro team. I also think the Adobe Connect User Group AsiaPac does a great job at highlighting and organizing some key resources and documentation to help you get started and learn best practices.

I am quite impressed by the extensive community site that Penn State University created for their Connect Pro users. No doubt it’s led to great adoption of their program. If you’re trying to help drive adoption at your organization, you might want to consider creating something similar.

YouTube has a number of Connect Pro training videos posted…try searching on “Adobe Connect Pro” or “Acrobat Connect Pro”. My personal favorite isn’t actually a training video, but an interesting use case -- a music group broadcast a performance over Connect Pro. Check it out -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfdu9z9ua0Q

Now that I’ve been in training and elearning for over 10 years, I’ve definitely cooled off on the whole certification thing. Who has time for it? What does it matter when I can refer to my years of actual experience? At this point would it really make any difference to what others think of me?

A recent meeting at CompTIA (www.comptia.org) has brought me full circle to my old driven nature to get another certification fix. I was one of a group of virtual classroom training SMEs who met to discuss the differences and similarities between physical classroom and virtual classroom training, and how one can assess the efficacy of an online instructor with as much objectivity as possible. CompTIA offers the Certified Technical Trainer (CTT+) certification for physical classroom instructors, and plans to roll out a similar certification for virtual classroom trainers in Q3 of 2008. I attribute my change of heart regarding the attractiveness of mid-career certification to two realizations stemming from this two day meeting.

Trainers reading this post may have at one time or another become a ‘Certified Technical Trainer’. I obtained the certification years ago to kick off the Microsoft Technical Trainer phase of my career. You can check out CompTIA’s web site for details, but to obtain the current CTT+ certification you have to pass a CBT (computer based test), and then prove you can actually apply that knowledge with a recording of yourself teaching students (no actors or house pets please), and interacting with the class for 20 minutes, in a way that shows you’ve in fact succeeded with the desired transfer of knowledge.

The CTT+ Virtual Classroom Trainer certification is planned to be a similar evaluation, only this time, it will be a recording of your virtual class delivery capabilities. One of the things that really impressed me while working with the group last week was the extent to which we were able to extract the essence of teaching skills from the tools themselves. A valuable part of the certification is that they won’t likely pass a candidate who just ‘knows’ the formula to be a good teacher and also ‘knows’ the features of their online classroom platform. That isn’t enough. If the candidate is not able to apply that knowledge in the demonstration teaching session, then all the features in Connect Pro won’t save them.

Did I just mention Connect Pro? Branded the ‘Tool Snob’ of the group (I’m assuming in the best possible way), I was more than once reminded of this need to separate product capabilities from teaching skills. CompTIA is firm in its assertion that no specific vendor or tool need be used to pass this certification, and I fully support them in that stance, or else the value of the certification would be diluted. What I do have to say, however, is this: if you are using Connect Pro as your Virtual Classroom, I believe it will be easier for you to demonstrate the capabilities of an exceptional trainer than it would be using any other tool, and here’s why I believe this to be true.

The crux of this certification – and of teaching in a Virtual Classroom– is your ability to demonstrate that you can engage your learners and transfer knowledge to the extent required to meet your objectives. Standard stuff. The CTT+ Handbook (available for free off the CompTIA web site http://certification.comptia.org/ctt/prepare.aspx ) describes the specific ‘Domains’ of skill required and how they will be ranked. I’m not going to list them all here for you. If you are interested, take a look at them. But here are a few ways that Connect Pro tools – when applied along with your exceptional abilities as an effective trainer – will help you perform well in your recorded teaching demonstration.

• Connect Pro Training lets you list a Catalog of training offerings, and/or email students to let them know when training is offered, the steps required for them to prepare, and send reminders so they don’t miss your class.
• The Connect Pro Virtual Classroom gives you a wealth of ways to pre-load a variety of content into you room, organize it into layouts, and get yourself ready to be the charismatic teacher that you are.
• By using Presenter presentations and quizzes, polls, breakout sessions, Captivate simulations, whiteboards, chat pods, and more, you can engage all your learners over the course of the training session, and address both auditory and visual cognitive needs, as well as giving hands-on exercises for application training.
• Students are likely to feel comfortable in the Connect Pro virtual classroom quickly, and you can facilitate this by ‘showing them around’ the room, and setting ground rules such as using the ‘Step Out’ setting if they step away, or always responding as directed when a question is asked. This keeps you on top of the level of engagement in the room, and allows you to adapt to the class as you would if you were all working together in a physical classroom.

Those are just a few key examples of how Connect Pro helps you offer an engaging virtual class, all of which will be valuable applications of the virtual classroom whether teaching and recording for your certification exam, or simply teaching as you do every day. I plan to follow up this posting with a whitepaper next month, including more real examples of best practices when teaching in a Connect Pro Virtual Classroom.

I can’t help but be a Tool Snob as I prepare for this new certification offering, because I can’t imagine teaching in a virtual classroom where all I could do was talk to my audience and show them slides. I recommend that you too consider reaffirming your elearning vows with a fresh certification. Engagement is Adobe’s specialty after all.

If you haven’t seen this before I’d encourage you to check it out http://www.adobe.com/government/breezo/connect_product_tour/dod_demo.html

My name is Mark Blair, some folks may know of me through my work for Adobe, Macromedia and Allaire in Asia Pacific over the last 8 years. I held various roles over the years including Technical Director, running Consulting in the Pacific and leading our server initiatives in the Asia Pacific region. All of these roles were obviously field based with a heavy technical sales focus. I’m looking forward to putting that field knowledge and experience to good use in my role in the Connect Pro product team. As part of me taking the role I relocated to San Francisco from Australia with my family.

My focus in the Connect team is on developing the appropriate partnerships to bring new capabilities to Connect and expose Connect to new markets. I’d be interested to hear feedback in this area as I begin to get up to speed with my new role at Adobe.

Have you ever had the brief panic attack when switching back and forth between a presentation and desktop share (or video) only to have the presentation reload on the first slide then “catch up” to the last slide you were on?

Fortunately there’s an easy and quick way to eliminate the slide “catch up” effect. Simply include your presentation on every layout. This will keep your slides in sync throughout your meeting. Note: You can hide your presentation behind other pods...see this screen shot:

http://my.adobe.acrobat.com/hidepod/

To conceal the presentation pod, simply select the pod you’d like to overlap it with by clicking on the title bar which will bring it to the front. To verify your presentation pod is hidden, select Pods from the menu option and verify your pod name has a checkmark next to it.

It’s that simple!

JP

Nowadays presentations are becoming more complex with dynamic movie backgrounds, embedded videos,
and flashy builds. Unfortunately presentations created in Keynote (Apple's equivlant to PowerPoint) are not
upload compatible with Acrobat Connect Pro yet. Keynote does offer an export to PPT option, however often times
text is reformatted, slide builds and transitions are lost or inconsistent, and there is no option to embed
videos.

At a recent event we supported all of the presentations were in Keynote and included embedded videos.
The challenge we faced was maintaining the original look and feel of the uploaded the
presentation and playing the embedded videos.

Following our best practices, we created our Connect Pro room layouts to reflect the meeting agenda along with
an additional layout for the videos. We layered/stacked the Share pods in the order in which they were to
be played in on the “videos” layout. During the event we switched between the presenters layout to the
videos layout in sync with the live presentation mimicking the Keynote version.

Here’s a quick summary of the conversion process we used to convert the Keynote presentations (and
videos) to an upload compatible (PPT) Acrobat Connect Pro format.

Please note: PowerPoint for Mac does not have the same import features as the Windows PowerPoint
application. For this process we used a MacBook Pro with Keynote ’08 and Office 2007 (installed on
VMware running Windows XP).

1. From Keynote select File -> Export and select the Image option. Select ‘PNG (high quality)’ and
check the ‘Create an image for each stage of builds’ option (Mac side).
2. Create a New Folder to copy the files into and select Export.
3. The .MOV files will be saved to a sub-folder in your newly created export folder. Alternatively
you can select ‘Show Package Contents’ from the Keynote file cut out the .MOV files.
4. Copy newly created folder and files to a PC for importing.
5. From PowerPoint select ‘Insert Photo Album’ choose ‘Insert picture from File/Disk – browse to
the folder you exported the PNGs to and select Ctrl+A then to insert/import the PNG files
then click Create.
6. Review the newly created slides removing extra transitions/slide duplicates.
7. To reduce the file size click on a picture/image in the presentation then select ‘Picture Tools’ from
the menu options then click on ‘Compress Pictures’. Under options select 96ppi and delete
cropped areas.
8. After compressing – save and close, then upload the PPT to the Connect content folder or Connect
meeting room.

Using a video conversion application such as Flash Video Encoder convert the video(s) from .MOV to
.FLV. Upload the files to the Acrobat Connect content folder or Connect meeting room.

How many of us have been distracted while watching a demonstration or sharing our screens by a little message pop-up (also known as a toast).

There is an easy way to disable this occasional nuisance. Select Pod options for the Chat pod and click on Disable Chat Notifications.

IMPORTANT: This setting will need to be selected for each person sharing/presenting as this setting is per Chat pod and on the individual (local) machine(s).

If you are using multiple Chat pods you will need to adjust this preference for each pod. If you are using the Q&A pod linked to the Chat pod it works the same, however you need to select the Disable Chat Notifications option before linking. If you forgot to disable notifications you can unlink (Pod options on the Q&A pod) select the disable option and re-link without loosing your Q&A Chat history.

As a regular user, you have the ability to create your own personal meeting template. In fact, it's so easy, you can create a template from any of your existing meetings. The only thing you need to do is move one of your existing meetings into your "My Templates" folder. Done. See how easy that is? Suppose you don't have a meeting that is worthy to create a template from. Start from scratch and create a new meeting. Before we start creating our template, let's take a look at what information a template stores.

Layouts, pods, and most contents and room information are preserved in the template, including the following:

* Layouts with name, order, and starting (selected) status
* Pods with name, size, position, and settings for full-screen toggle
* Pod content
* Page number in FlashPaper and position of the seek bar in Flash Video (FLV file)
* Whiteboard overlay contents
* Poll state (Prepare, Open, Close), questions, answers, and broadcast results
* Questions and answers, Chat pod link, and status (Open, Answered, All)
* Text in Notes pod
* Camera and voice settings
* Room on hold (Yes, No)
* Value for guest entry
* Messages to be displayed to users when a meeting is on hold or ended
* Room background, screen resolution, and bandwidth
* Presenter Only area status

So, in effect, almost anything you put in your meeting room including content, notes, layouts, pod locations, etc will be there when you create a new meeting from a template. Cool - huh?

Another great feature about templates, is that once you make a template, you can always go back and change it or tweak some things. We all misspell things or forget content.

To create a template, create a new meeting (or modify and existing one) and create all the layouts and pods that you want to have in your template. Also, the template will remember what layout you left off on, and what status the meeting was on (On hold, block users, open, etc) After your template meeting is finished, simply move the meeting into your template folder. Next time you create a new meeting, you will have the option to choose that template from the template pulldown menu.

If you think this is a template that everybody would benefit from, ask your account administrator to move it into the shared templates folder.

To give you some ideas on how templates can best be used, here are some ways we use templates at Adobe.

1. We use Acrobat Connect with our large meeting rooms, and we frequently integrate the voice and camera pod with these meetings. Because they are large meetings, more of the focus is on slides and other content than chat/polls/etc. We've created a template that reflects this focus and also has renamed some of the pods and layouts - instead of the "chat" pod, it's called "questions for the presenter"
2. A while ago, our Knowledge worker business unit asked us to create a template for their sales staff. This template not only has content specific layouts, but it also has all the relevant content included in all the appropriate layouts. This content includes a custom background, videos, presentations, and PDF's in the file sharing pod. It's basically a virtual starter kit for our sales staff when they have to create a connect meeting room for a customer.
3. We conduct over 50 eSeminars a month, and many of them are new topics. To make creating these rooms easy, we've created a template that has specific layouts according to our eSeminar flow. We've also created polling questions that we ask in every eSeminar. That alone saves us the time from cutting and pasting polling questions 50 times a month!

Hopefully this will give you some ideas on how to create templates and how to use them effectively.