Comments This week we launched Connect 7.5 – the latest version of our web conferencing solution. Amongst the many new developments in this version was the announcement that the number of people who can participate on a single web conference has risen to a staggering 80,000 – the largest of any web conferencing provider.
This is a stadium-busting number of people which would fill some of largest venues in the world – a statistic which was noted by a number of observers.
This ‘stadium’ analogy got me thinking about just what 80,000 people really looks like and how you can put that into context…. Well fellow fact fans, after a little desk research (and the wonders of Google) I have some answers. You’ll be interested to know that when packed to capacity – as it will no doubt be this weekend – Twickenham Stadium holds 80,000 fervent, rugby-loving enthusiasts. In addition to this the new Olympic stadium for London 2012 is expected to hold 80,000 people, willing on our Olympic hopefuls.
These stadiums are outperformed in the UK only by the new Wembley Stadium which holds 90,000 fans. They are all however, dwarfed in comparison by the Rungrado May Day Stadium in North Korea which holds a whopping 150,000 people, although I’d rather not speculate on what they watch there.
For non-sports fans the magic 80,000 number crops up elsewhere too… the population of The Isle Man – give or take a few – is 80,000 men, women and children. So if they wanted to, every resident of the Isle of Man could now join an Adobe Connect conference session and communicate, share ideas and collaborate with one another from the comfort of their PC.
Of course that’s a fairly unlikely application for Connect…. But where the extended conferencing capacity will prove invaluable is for brining together large groups of individuals from multiple locations, for example large company webinars, distance learning lectures or large-scale corporate training sessions.
Connect 7.5 of course also has many other new features and benefits, including improved integration capabilities with other audio conferencing providers and enhancements to security and compliance functionality.
But for me though, the idea of an Acrobat web conference uniting the whole of the Isle of Man is still an irresistible proposition… watch this space!
Ben Forsaith