Some have argued that this endeavor, dubbed “Project Unicorn”, was in retaliation to Michael (allegedly) hiring an Austin Powers impersonator to provide a singing telegram to our CTO, and fellow co-founder, on his birthday. No one has gone on the record either confirming or denying this motive.

The aformentioned Austin Powers impersonator

Local San Francisco muralist Micho was commissioned to design the unicorn mural, while other staff organized the procurement of important hardware, like the pink “Inbox”, the Jonas Brothers Pillow, and the Twilight poster.  Additionally, staff from our office around the country were kind enough to ship props to headquarters, to be incorporated into this artistic display.

Micho puts Operation Unicorn into action

Aside from the leadership, skill, and tolerance of Micho, this was effort by the entire ConnectSolutions team.  All the creative work on the windows, and the non-unicorn walls poured out of the hearts and minds of staff at ConnectSolutions.  When you see those walls (coming in a follow-up post), I think you’ll agree that this was truly a labor of love.

Michael's Arrival...broadcast to our remote employees in HD using ConnectSolutions Podium

Keep an eye out for a documentary on this important project.  I know you will find it both enlightening, and inspiring.

The two discuss the future of streaming video and web collaboration, and what sets ConnectSolutions apart from other competitors. Here are some highlights:

• A premium, full-screen capable HD webcasting product, that works on PCs, Macs, and iPhones
• Web collaboration in a secure environment
• A discussion of how our customers have used social media like Twitter and Facebook to increase audience size
• How ConnectSolutions’ focus on customer service helps ensure customer success by focusing on providing real-world customer solutions

The Backchannel by Cliff Atkinson. “The premise of this book is how people who give public presentations can leverage backchannel conversations happening on Twitter to monitor audience response and respond in real time to questions, concerns, or comments that may come up.”

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. “It’s a book set during World War II in Germany and written from death’s perspective.  It’s an “I can’t put it down” type of book, I’m loving it!”

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. “I don’t read much, but this thing is addicting!  If you read just one book this year about a disgraced Swedish journalist and a crazy rich industrialist … make it this book!”

Slide-ology by Nancy Duarte. “A great book about making more engaging presentations.”

The Culture of Collaboration by Evan Rosen. “Our business is not just technology.”

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. “I think I’m the only person in the world that didn’t read this in high school—so I’m finally getting around to it.  Teenagers are obviously angry and/or depressed, but that kid is BITTER!”

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss [Don't worry, this book was suggested by a team member with young children]

The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani

Comment on this blog, and let us know what books you are reading this summer!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrei_dimofte/

Americans logged 694 MILLION business trips in 2008. That’s a lot of missed flights, late check-ins, and time away from family and friends. Believe it or not, 694 million business-related trips represented a decrease of 12% from 2007, and with the economic woes of the past few years, that trend is continuing. The days of traveling for large conferences (think global sales kickoff in Vegas) are also increasingly scrutinized, and as a result, were down 14.5% in 2008. Fast-forward a bit, and you know that today’s economy and travel experiences are met with fewer flights available, at increased costs, with heightened security processes, making for a stressful and unproductive “travel experience.” But wait…there’s more! Nearly a quarter of a billion of the above business trips were conducted by Sales and Management positions within the US. For sales people, this means time away from being productive…even time offline while your competitors hammer away at your leads and customers.

Imagine the impact of saving 2-3% of that expenditure and investing in R&D, or employee benefits, or customer-service programs! It’s time to rethink business travel…

There is incredible value in being face-to-face with customers, but physically being there comes at a cost as described above. With real-time collaboration capabilities provided by ConnectSolutions, millions of meeting minutes are delivered everyday from the comfort of offices, homes, or vacation spots we’ll pretend we’re not at. These virtual meetings and events provide extremely effective face-to-face experiences without the travel, and without the hassle.

Many organizations are spending 5% or more of their gross revenue in business travel. Imagine the impact of saving 2-3% of that expenditure and investing in R&D, or employee benefits, or customer-service programs! It’s time to rethink business travel…

For a great resource on travel expenditures and statistics, please take a look at Business Travel Market Metrics by IHS Global Insight (http://global.ihs.com/), which was the source for the above stats.

Prior to working with ConnectSolutions, Cyrus was a Collaborations Architect where he managed on number of installations of Adobe Connect Pro for the NIH (National Institutes of Health), DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency), RAND  Corporation, General Dynamics, and the DOE (Department of Energy). A specialist in streaming media and video teleconferencing networks, Cyrus designed and integrated video communication networks for the NIH,   NARA (National Archives and Records Administration), and the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission). His career in the IP based communication arena started in 1998 when he was put in charge of integrating the NIH’s first PACS (Picture Archiving and Communications System)  for the Clinical Centers Department of Radiology. Cyrus holds a bachelors degree from George Mason University, Masters Certification from George Washington University, and currently resides in Los Angeles.

Welcome Cyrus!

MeetingPulse - Real-time Metrics on your Desktop

MeetingPulse: A desktop application providing easy access to your Connect Pro meetings, reports, and notifications (toasts) when users enter any of your meeting rooms

ConnectMonitor:  A desktop application that pings your server using a specific monitoring point to verify all is well.

QuickMeeting:  A pleasant beginning to every meeting!  See a tutorial on connectusers.com available here.

Looking for something else?  Have a great idea, but don’t know much about how to make it work with Connect Pro?  Drop us a line in the comments and we’ll follow-up!

Thomas Person is a 20-year veteran of interactive multimedia development, and has traveled and spoken internationally on the benefits and virtues of technology in the area of on-line learning, training, collaboration, and content development.  Previously with Adobe (formerly Macromedia) for 10 years, Thomas joins ConnectSolutions as an evangelist to promote our products and services, and ensure overall customer success with our solutions.

Alfonso Hooker joins the company after more than 13 years as a Manager and Senior Systems Administrator.  Alfonso’s areas of expertise include many of the platform technologies that form the QuickConnect platform, including VMWare, Linux, Cisco, and Windows.  Alfonso brings a wide array of enterprise computering experience to the team including large storage and clustering technologies.

We are really excited to be able to work with Thomas and Alfonso, and we know our customers and partners will be too!

And if the following sounds like you, we want to talk to you immediately:

… a Windows and Linux hacker, MySQL and SQLServer expert, performance and networking specialist, and excellent scripter
… someone looking for challenging, cool problems to solve, in an engineering-driven environment
… someone who likes taking things apart in your off hours to see how they work, just as much as you like putting them back together when youíre done
… someone who gets great satisfaction from making customers happy, by building systems that are faster, more reliable, more maintainable, and more available

Acrobat Connect Macromedia Breeze

File this feature under incredibly useful but virtually unknown.  Acrobat Connect (and Macromedia Breeze, and Presedia before that) has a great feature for tracking presentation views by individuals.  If you are a sales rep, and want to be alerted when a customer has viewed a customized proposal presentation you provided, or a support rep who wants to be alerted when an individual has reviewed a technical presentation, then Acrobat Connect’s "Email Link" feature is a great tool for instant notification of presentation views.  Here’s how to use it:

1. Log in to Acrobat Connect and go to your Content Library
2. Select a piece of content, and view its "details"
3. There is a navigation option called "E-mail Link"
4. Enter in the email address you would like to send the presentation to, along with any custom email contents you’d like to include.
5. Send away!

What Happens Next?

Acrobat Connect sends the email to the individual.  The email includes a custom link that, when clicked, takes the user to the presentation (or content) for viewing.  That custom link ALSO tells Acrobat Connect to send you an email alerting you to the fact that this person has just viewed your presentation.  You can then follow-up with the individual immediately or later, knowing that they have viewed the content and may be interested in your products/services/content.