Adobe Connect Blog

During a recent Adobe Connect webinar titled ‘Virtual Conferences for Government’, Dean Pianta of Envolve Media discussed how the Adobe Connect platform is being used within government organizations for virtual classrooms, online meetings and seminars. He reviewed several benefits of moving meetings, conferences, trainings and events online, such as cost savings and archived recordings. The benefit of having the recordings of these sessions to view after an event is for those that may have missed the event, or for those that would like to review the session for reference.

Adobe Connect has advantages like the event management tool that can be utilized to design landing pages using a template or built from scratch. With this feature organizations can setup registration for an event with custom landing pages and forms. The advantage of a powerful registration system is also the tracking of attendee information pre- and post-event.

Watch this recording to learn more details on how virtual conferences are being created and used across the board by government agencies and organizations: http://onlineevents.adobeconnect.com/p2d3iegluqo/

The use of videoconferencing in business has been on the rise over the last few years, but it wasn’t until recently that the Department of Defense (DOD) started heavily pushing for its use in its day-to-day operations. In the past, the DOD’s enterprise collaboration tool, Defense Connect Online (DCO), which is powered by Adobe Connect, had been used primarily to supplement physical conferences.

Recently, Federal Computer Week magazine sat down with our Mike Murtha, who manages the DCO program here at Adobe to discuss the DCO program. Mike reiterated the increased demand by the DOD to use videoconferencing to replace physical meetings and conferences. “Over the past three months, we have gotten a lot of inquiries [saying]: ‘We want to run an entire conference virtually,’” Murtha said.

FCW also discussed barriers that were in place that discouraged the use of videoconferencing such as costs, security concerns, and infrastructure requirements. The article noted that an advantage that Adobe Connect offers is that its services also provide videoconferencing capabilities for both desktops and mobile devices. Mike mentioned that the DCO system wasn’t initially built for videoconferencing, but that the customers are pushing it in that direction.

To read more about how federal agencies are promoting the use of videoconferencing, click here.

As effective as Adobe Connect is with helping companies collaborate more efficiently and save costs in a variety of areas, what often gets overlooked is how various government agencies are benefitting from the use of Adobe Connect.

Recently, FedTech and StateTech Magazines, which focus on the government’s use of technology, spotlighted how the Department of Defense and the Bainbridge Island Police Department are using Adobe Connect Web conferencing in their everyday operations.

Those of you who follow this blog know that Adobe Connect has been used in the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Defense Connect Online (DCO) program for some time, but you may not know that the DoD expanded its use of Adobe Connect to support Adobe Connect Mobile in its new Defense Information System Agency’s (DISA) Mobile Project.  FedTech Magazine interviewed DISA enterprise collaboration services program manager, Karl Kurz, who talked about how the agency uses Adobe Connect. One of the more interesting uses Kurz talked about is how DCO allows deployed soldiers to keep in touch with family members back home. Kurz said with Adobe Connect, “The ability to respond to visual cues and to see dynamic content on another person’s computer makes this form of communication much more effective than other less media-rich methods.”

StateTech Magazine sat down with Detective Trevor Ziemba of the Bainbridge Island Police Department to discuss its unique use of Adobe Connect. For the last three years, the department has been using Adobe Connect along with Connect Mobile to assist in maritime response, allowing the department to quickly initiate video-conferencing sessions with county and state SWAT teams. Ziemba said, “I could shoot live feeds and still photos and feed it to others in the video conference, and we had the same capabilities as the original system — the ability to interact, share files and data, text and talk via [Voice over IP].”

You can get the full stories of these Adobe Connect applications at the magazines’ websites or by clicking the links above. And if you have any unique use cases for Adobe Connect, we’d love to hear them, so feel free to share in the comments below.