Knowledge is power, and today we’re going to get more powerful by learning about web conferencing mistakes.  These are fairly common, easily avoidable, and we can have better web conferences by knowing about them ahead of time.

Mistake #1  Arriving on Time - While it’s good to be punctual, “on time” for a web conference host is at least ten minutes beforehand.  This pre-conference time lets us get set up, check for problems, organize speakers and moderators, and be ready for “on time”.

Mistake #2  Leaving Other Programs On - A web conference allows us to share PowerPoint, documents, spreadsheets, and even our desktop, but we can also inadvertently share an email popup or instant message with all of our participants!  We should make sure all non-conference programs are turned off, and while we’re at it, we should double-check our background image to make sure it’s professional.

Mistake #3  Getting Sidetracked - To host a web conference, we have to be on a computer.  And on that computer--most likely--is all of the tools needed to create, correct, and finish the very things we’re having a web conference about.  Resist the temptation to stop the conference to update, change, or integrate.  Just make a note, and do it afterwards.

I hope this small review of mistakes to avoid wi ll help you in your future web conferences.  Help us out too, and tells us other mistakes you know of in a comment!

I really thought that I wasn’t old, but in my Junior year of college, I remember the first time I ever saw a student bring a laptop to class to take notes.  The teacher was hesitant to allow it but, “As long as you don’t play video games during the lecture, I guess it’s okay.”

Well check out this video of the modern college classroom, and one of the futures of learning:

How cool is that?  College students using Twitter to effectively outlearn the normal educational structure.  We can make similar strides in our audio, video and web conferences as well using short-message contribution systems.

Twitter is a great system for getting the thoughts, comments, and questions of a vast amount of people that wouldn’t normally be possible if gathered in the typical conference call Q&A style.  With a lot of participants for example, there just wouldn’t be enough time.  And what about shy people?  We might never hear from them verbally, but they’re typed contributions could be invaluable.

And it doesn’t have to be Twitter per se, there are private twitter-like programs out there.  Or, if you add a web conference to your conference call, you can use the chat feature.  There’s also instant messaging, and programs like Google wave, which allows emails, text, and IM to join a chat conversation.

The point is that by embracing and utilizing non-traditional communications mediums in our conference calls, we can look forward to much more effective collaborations.  And why not integrate Twitter and the like?  After all, it wasn’t too long ago that the simple conference call was itself a non-traditional communications medium.