Presence - Useful For Webinars?

Line56 published an article Monday talking about build in an option for the webinar host to display a presence indicator so that an interested viewer has a way to interact with a live sales or support representative while watching the recorded content. One area I haven't seen presence well implemented is in assisting audience members during registration or login to an event. This is usually handled by a piece of small print included at the end of a lot of text in an invitation email or landing page information. "If you experience problems, please call or email us at ." People having difficulty with an interactive process have a hard time remembering where in the instruction set they might have seen such a note, and it completely pulls them out of their process. This could be implemented in a much more sophisticated way if the technology vendor gave their clients the ability to establish an interactive presence indicator integrated right into the registration or login process. "Having trouble? Click here to speak with a live support rep. Or let us call you on your phone." And so on. The indication of presence from the hosting company is comforting and valuable to the audience. Ad hoc collaborative web meetings are not the only type of interactivity that can benefit from new applications of presence technology. Conferencing vendors would be well served by offering it as an option in scheduled one-to-many online seminars. www.wsuccess.com).