Online Meetings

This page offers an overview of the possibilities for online meetings and events. Once you have decided on an event, you may wish to visit the Online Meeting Planning Checklist page.

What is an Online Meeting? When should I use one?

An online meeting is where two or more people use internet or telephone based tools to do something together. Just like offline, what happens depends on the purpose of the meeting. Some examples are:






What about longer form online events?

While we typically think about 60-90 minute online meetings (about the maximum attention span) people are creating entire online conferences that run over multiple days, have many synchronous sessions as well as asynchronous web based discussions and sharing of resources.

How do I plan and facilitate an online meeting?

Check out the Online Meeting Planning ChecklistOnline Meeting Checklist

What tools should I consider for an online meeting?

The most important consideration in choosing a tool is to know what sorts of activities you need to support in your meetings. Then you can look for tools that support those activities. For example, sometimes talking on the telephone or web based voice tools like Skype (http://www.skype.comhttp://www.skype.com) is all you need! Keep it simple if small group conversation is the main activity.

If you determine you need a full fledged web meeting tool, check out this page which gives an example list of web meeting tools (free and paid) http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/05/15/online-meeting-tools/

Resources: