Adobe Connect Blog

Over the past year, recognition continued to roll in for Adobe Connect.  Another great review that came in at the end of 2012 was from Network World.

Network World conducted side-by-side comparisons of eight of the leading Web conferencing vendors and ranked Adobe Connect in a tie for first. The Network World web conferencing vendor test ranked the services according to four scenarios ranging from meetings of two to five people to large scale webinars.

We were excited to see the areas where the review praised Adobe Connect, including the ability to host large-scale webinars calling it a “post-conferencing reporting powerhouse.” Network World also noted “Connect also has the strongest features when it came to measuring audience engagement and supporting archival meeting content.” Other areas where Network World positioned Adobe Connect above other offerings were the recording options available, including the ability to record the chats and participants names, and its mobile client, noting its “consistent user interfaces and clean look.”

In addition, the review discussed persistent URLs for Adobe Connect meeting rooms, calling them “handy when a team is working over a period of time on a set of documents.” As our customers know, this feature is also useful for setting up last-minute, ad hoc meetings.

Another area the review considered was the audio options each service provides. Our own Alistair Lee recently blogged about our Universal Voice feature, which lets users leverage VoIP or their audio provider of choice.

We’re interested in what you have to say, though, after you give the roundup review a read. Let us know what stands out, good and bad, and what you’d like to see more of from us moving forward.

In October, we announced a major update to our DCO Connect Mobile app for Android devices, enabling anywhere, anytime mobile collaboration leveraging Adobe Connect web conferencing  across over 700,000 users at the U.S. Department of Defense.  Today, we’re very excited to announce that the DCO Connect Mobile app is now available for iOS, delivering complete hosting, presenting, and sharing controls to fully drive collaboration and fulfill the many different use cases DoD personnel have for collaboration while operating in a mobile environment.

The capabilities map to those of the standard Adobe Connect Mobile 2.0 app, and include:

• Start and end meetings (B)
• Start, stop, and manage meeting audio and teleconferencing bridge
• Invite others to the meeting
• Manage participants (B)
• Start and stop recordings
• Enable web camera rights for all participants at once
• Control all active pods (B)
• Switch between layouts in the meeting room
• Present content (e.g. advancing slides and animations) (B)
• Share content from share history
• Share content from Adobe Connect content library
• Share content from local device photo library
• Video conferencing with front and back-facing camera support (B)
• Use drawing tools (pencil, highlighter, shapes) on whiteboard and on top of shared files/video
• Use emoticons: Raise Hand (B), Agree / Disagree (B), Speak Louder / Speak Softer, Speed Up / Slow Down, Laughter, Applause
• Stepped away indication appears when multi-tasking away from app
• Device phone number detected and populated when joining audio
• Participate in breakout rooms

(Some features apply to tablets only; “B” indicates both smartphone and tablet)

DCO Connect Mobile (version 2.0) is now available for free download on iTunes Preview here.

(Note that this app pertains to those with a DCO account only; users who will not use this app in relation to DCO can download our Adobe Connect Mobile app here).

The app supports the following devices and operating systems on iOS:

- Devices: iPad, iPad2, iPad3; iPhone 4 and 4 S, iPod touch (3rd generation minimum recommended)
- Supported OS versions: iOS 4.3.x, 5.x, or 6.x (5.x or higher recommended)

For more information, please see these resources below:
Adobe Connect Mobile webpage
Getting Started Guide – Hosts and Presenters (Tablets)
Getting Started Guide – Hosts and Presenters (Smartphones)
Getting Started Guide – Participants (Tablets)
Getting Started Guide – Participants (Smartphones)

By Matt Murdoch and Treion Muller, FranklinCovey

Have you ever seen, or better still, been part of a group that decides to jump off a cliff at the local swimming hole? There are at least two interesting things to watch. One is approach and the other is execution. Experience and skill affects how each prospective diver approaches the edge. Some are confident, some are cautious and some are hell bent on just lettin’ ‘er rip.

While each individual has their own experience and perceptions about both approach and execution, there is one thing that all share in common – the platform. Whether you’re new at it or it’s old hat for you, you’re jumping off the same cliff – the same platform.

Adobe Connect is just that – a platform. It offers the same launching pad for the inexperienced and the expert. It provides a place to try something new (and a little bit scary) or something you’ve done a thousand times before. The platform itself is not what shapes either approach or execution. That is the province of the person on the platform and what they will do with their launch pad.

Don’t default and abandon control and creativity to the platform. Don’t let your approach, your plan or your execution be controlled solely by the platform. It’s a jumping off point, nothing more. Your job is to shape Adobe Connect to your ends. It’s the place you start from. It’s the jumping off point. Adobe Connect has far more potential than is usually tapped if you understand how to shape it to your ends rather than being contained by it.

There are four steps you can take to ensure you don’t default:

1. Awareness: Read the Manual
We know, almost nobody starts with the manual, but a detailed awareness of what the platform offers is THE starting point. Once you know what it CAN do you can start worrying about getting that platform to do what you WANT it to do.

2. Attempt: Try the Manual
After you’ve got a reasonable familiarity with the basics of what the platform can do, put it through its paces. Design a webinar but stick to the fundamentals – don’t get fancy yet.

What you’re looking for at this phase is a clean presentation – designed to deliver a message and stimulate an engaging conversation. And, create a presentation that is simple to deliver – not too complex or too technically convoluted. Just get off the cliff and into the water – and do the same jump a dozen or so times to get comfortable with it.

3. Assimilate: Apply the Manual
This is where we begin to break away from the simple default options of the platform. This is where we start to get fancy and, more importantly, where we start to make the platform our own. We make it our own when we get the platform to work WITH us and FOR our audience. It’s where you separate and prioritize what you’ve learned in the first steps into tools and techniques that you’ll keep and use and those that you’ll ignore or discard.

4. Author: Write Your Own Manual
Now, throw away the manual and never (or at least, hardly ever) look at it again. It’s time to experiment with new jumps and tricks and to author you own handbook. This is the most important method to avoid defaulting back to the same old way of doing things.

One final thought. Conducting a webinar is as different from live in-person training or a face-to-face meeting as jumping off a cliff is to jumping off your bed. You mustn’t default to traditional approaches because good-quality online events must be designed and delivered much differently to be truly effective.

You can learn more about this and other key principles in our book, The Webinar Manifesto: Never Design, Deliver or Sell Lousy Webinars Again.