How many meetings have you spent being distracted by characters such as the heavy breather, the distracted driver or the hold music culprit? Web meetings can be a really productive way to stay in touch and work together with your colleagues and clients but there are many considerations to keep in mind to make sure you’re not a meeting offender. We pulled together a short video with some pointers to remind us all of the standard WebEx etiquette.
5 WebEx Etiquette Tips
1. Look your best: WebEx is the ideal place to hone what we like to call your “business mullet”: business up top, party below the camera. If you keep things professional (read: no bathrobes or Hawaiian shirts), you can feel free to wear your sweats and slippers when not in view. Just remember to turn your camera off before you stand up or else be ready for the onslaught of office hazing. (see this in the video at :32)
2. Know when to share video: Many computers and mobile devices now offer built-in cameras, which are a great way to connect with the people you meet with… but not every situation is the same. Use common sense – keep your camera off while you’re driving or in a chaotic environment such as the airport that will be distracting for others involved. Put it on when you want to have a more natural conversation or show product details and examples. (see this tip in the video at :54)
3. Keep your microphone muted: You can’t always control when your doorbell will ring, when the car behind you honks or when your neighbor’s dog will go after the mailman. When in doubt, keep your line muted (either on your phone or by manually muting yourself on WebEx). If you’re the meeting host, you also have the power to mute people manually so you don’t waste precious time asking the heavy breather to tone it down. Read More »
This certainly has been a monumental year for Cisco’s Hosted Collaboration Solutions (HCS), as many service providers such as Verizon and Orange Business Services, embraced the cloud and the potential services that can come with it. In the case of their business customers, these service providers now offer them a slew of unified communications tools (such as video conferencing and mobility solutions ) through the cloud to allow their employees to communicate and collaborate wherever they are and on whatever device.
Even our partners are seeing the value that collaboration via the cloud can offer its customers; as one of our channel partners, Neutral Tandem, announced yesterday. As an expert in operating and managing IP networks, Neutral Tandem introduced the first cloud-based collaboration service in the United States specifically developed to be resold by Cisco’s Value-Added Reseller (VAR) community and System Integrators (SIs). The service, based on Cisco’s HCS, will enable VARs/SIs to deliver a full suite of unified communications and collaboration applications.
I guess you can say that cloud collaboration is in full swing as it continues to gain traction steadily in the market. Read More »
Today, we’re featuring a guest post from Eric Schoch, senior director for hosted collaboration in Cisco’s Collaboration organization. Eric is responsible for hosted and “as a service” solutions, strategic pricing and licensing, and business development.
There is simply no denying the increasing importance of being connected. Generation Y in particular, who grew up with mobile devices affixed almost permanently to their hands, views connectivity as one of life’s fundamental resources.
The newest addition to the workforce considers their mobile devices as an essential workplace tool to managing their workload and connecting with their colleagues on the go. While sitting in a meeting or having lunch in the break room, you can almost visualize the text bubbles hovering over crowds of this generation of workers as fingers hammer away at phones and tablets, eyes glued to the shiny screens in their hands. BYOD
But this trend goes far beyond lunch hours and happy hours. As proven by Chapter Two of the 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report, the next-generation workforce is demanding flexibility in their choice of devices in both the workplace and remote-work options, illustrating the importance of the Internet in workforce culture. Social media freedom, device flexibility, and work mobility, in the case of 30% of the study’s respondents, are more important when accepting a job than a higher salary.
We sat down with Marc Ayers, Senior Manager of Product Marketing, to better understand how Cisco simplifies unified communications for the mid-size business.
Leading into our upcoming news about offerings for our mid-size business customers, we are conducting a series of interviews with members of our product teams so get their insights into unified communications from a mid-size business and Cisco perspective.
Today, Cisco kicks off our 2010 Cisco Collaboration Summit with two new major announcements in collaboration. Lynn Lucas, Director of Collaboration for Cisco, introduces these new announcements and how Cisco is transforming collaboration.
