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 Joined on 06/29/2006 Posts: 1,959
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Why Twebinars Rock

22 July , 01:35 AM

I'm pretty pumped to tune into the next Twebinar that happens today on July 22 at 1pm Central Time. It's the second installment of a three-part series that's happening over the summer. The topic of discussion in Part 2 is Who Really Owns Your Brand? I know our social media tour-de-force Richard Binhammer (@RichardatDell) will be participating via webcam and Twitter as it unfolds.

So, what the heck is a Twebinar? It's an idea hatched by Radian 6's David Alston (@davidalston) and Chris Brogan (@chrisbrogan).  Think of a mashup between a webinar and Twitter. The theme of the first one was Game Changing Moves. Chris served as the host via webcam and pre-recorded video interviews with social media leaders who discussed examples of companies are using social media to connect with their customers. That's the webinar piece.. adding Twitter to the mix is where things get interesting.

Why do I say that? Because Twitter allows all the participants to talk to each other in real time as we're watching the video. It was like watching a TV show with 1,500 buddies in the same room. To track conversations, I used a browser with two tabs open: one with the Twebinar window and a second with (now Twitter-owned) Summize.com where I searched for @twebinars and #tweb. That made it easy to keep up with a rapid flow of conversation that happened during the Twebinar itself. Clicking on the image below will take you to that same search. It will also allow you to track the conversation from today's Twebinar. Update: Please use #tweb2 to track today's conversations.

Twebinar Search in Summize

I'm excited about the Twebinar concept because of the possibilities it brings to the table. I'll probably blog about some of those ideas later. If you're interested in tuning in for today's Twebinar, here's the link to register. Or for more details on how to get ready for this one visit www.twebinar.com.

The image below is a snippet from the Twebinar website that summarizes how it all works. You can click the image to register. Hope to see you there.

Twebinar

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John McElhenney
06 Aug 2008 10:14 AM

@ Lionel Okay, the summize and searchability I get. I like the chat window within LM or WEBex. The content, and the findability of it, might not be very valuable after the T-webinar, but it will be captured outside the system.

 
John McElhenney - dell employee
24 Jul 2008 08:31 PM

Lionel and Richard,

I was part of Chris's first twebinar a litle while back and my first reaction was "why?"

What does the TW-itter add that is not already available in LiveMeeting, WebEx or the Acrobat conferencing platform? I am not trying to be a devils advocate, though I have been accused of such, I am really wanting to "get it."

Let's just use LiveMeeting (not necessarily the gold standard) as an example.

  1. In TWeb you can chat along while watching the webinar.  vs.
    In LM you can chat along within the LM instance while watching the webinar
  2. In LM there is no fail whale.  vs
    In TWeb: Fail whale.
  3. In TWeb you can keep on tab open to the INAR part of the show and another tab open to the TW part  vs.
    In LM: It's all in one browser window.
  4. In LM: You can record the entire presentation and the chat via the LM system and play it back later.  vs.
    In TWeb: you can play back the presentation and retweet while it's going along, almost as if it were happening live, again.

I am so into innovation that I signed up for the TWebinar when I first saw it advertised. I think they are still advertising this new innovative tool on the little Facebook advertising patch.

But I don't get it yet.
 
Lionel_Menchaca
27 Jul 2008 03:40 PM

No question that Twitter needs to be more reliable overall as a service. Totally agree there. It's worth mentioning that Chris still does use conferencing software (I think it's the Adobe conference tool) to host the Twebinar and to connect with guest speakers in real time, so the Twebinar model isn't a total replacement.

The main reason I prefer the Twebinar model is that it seems facilitate group discussions much better than Live Meeting or WebEx or others. I've used several different conferencing software packages in different capacities. And though they have a chat window for conversations, I rarely ever use them.

With the Twebinar model, I think services like summize.com and twemes.com are much more effective because they are easily searchable and don't require any special login. Take a look at #tweb2 on summize.com to see what I mean. You can easily seach for the overall topic, for individual comments, or track discussions of just a few folks out of the group.

Since these tools are web-based ones open to the public, no logins are required... I've had several conference sessions that either don't work or partially work. As long as Twitter is up and running (I know that has to improve)I don't mind switching between a couple of tabs in Firefox or IE to track the conversations. Ideally, I use Twhirl to comment to the whole group or to individuals, along with a tab or two of summize.com and twemes.com (I like it because you can have it auto-refresh new comments on the fly) to track the conversation.

 
eric
23 Jul 2008 02:55 PM

wow that's pretty cool stuff. i never heard of a twebinar before but i wills ure check out the next one!
 
Randy Ksar
22 Jul 2008 11:33 AM

Great stuff! Can you tell me a little more about the webcams you are using, audio recording and on-demand viewing details?  Are you using http://mogulus.com to go back and forth between you and Chris?
 
Lionel_Menchaca
22 Jul 2008 08:22 PM

Randy: Short answer is I think that's a question for Chris Brogan on Twitter (www.twitter.com/chrisbrogan). I can tell you that @RichardatDell used his internal webcam on his XPS M1330. 

 
Annalie Killian
22 Jul 2008 09:14 AM

Hey Lionel...with time differences between geographies, I am always at a loss for how to access the twebinar content "after the fact" eg, if I was already asleep in Australia at the time the twebinar kicked off.  There must be a simple way..I just cant work out how to.  Help? 
 
Lionel_Menchaca
22 Jul 2008 09:39 AM

Annalie: Given that today's Twebinar will happen in the middle of the night your time, here's what I'd recommend:

Tracking the conversation is the easy part. Just click on this link (or click on the white Twitter Search image in my post above.

As far as viewing the videos, I bet Chris and team will archive them the same way they did on Part 1. Click here to access them, scroll to about the 5 minute mark to view.

 
David Alston
22 Jul 2008 08:00 AM

Hey there Lionel,

Thanks for spreading the good word on today's Twebinar.  It will definitely be great to hear more about how you and the rest of the gang at Dell engage in social media to share brand ownership with your many clients and fans.  It was great to hear that Richard agreed to join us live via webcam to go into the details as the feedback from the first Twebinar was that folks were hoping we could to go even deeper on our Twebinar topics.

Tweet you this afternoon at 2pm EDT.

Cheers.

David