The last hour and a half has been an exercise in frustration.
I spent most of it freaking out as I tried to connect to today’s webinar and listening to busy signals and dropped audio on my laptop’s speakers. The rest of the time I spent on hold waiting for technical support at GotoWebinar, the company whose technology we were hoping would power future ERE webinars.
We will not be using them again.
The virtual meeting room that we used was supposed to hold up to 1,000 people, and since we regularly get large groups of 500 or more on our calls this was important. This time, we hit 250 listeners on the call when the problems began.
GotoWebinar has no emergency line, and when I finally got through to them I was informed that they were “already investigating issues with that phone number.” When I asked to speak to a manager and said that it was urgent, I was asked for my number and told that I would get a call back. They did not ask for my name, and I am still waiting for the call.
My apologies to every person who was on the call and experienced the poor audio quality.
My apologies to those who could not even make it on to the call because they got busy signals when they dialed in.
Especially, my apologies to Jeremy and Dan who soldiered on through the webinar in spite of the technical issues — they behaved like the pros that they are and did not miss a beat.
Update: 1/29/09
Jeremy and Dan have been gracious enough to offer to repeat the webinar on Friday, February 6 at 2:00 PM EST. Register here.
Also make sure to check out the slides and a re-recording of the presentation below!
4 comments
rss | trackback
Britton Stuhldreher Jan 28, 2009 at 4:45 pm
We walked away from the webinar with many “take away’s” and appreciated your time and efforts regardless of technical glitches. Thank you for pulling the recruiting community together with motivating insight.
Beth Carvin Jan 28, 2009 at 4:47 pm
I feel your pain, David. I was conducting a webinar a couple months ago and half-way through — while I was in the middle of presenting — I hear a click and then straight to dialtone. I couldn’t believe it! I dialed back in, apologized and continued with the presentation. I got booted out of the phone system 2 more times during the last hour.
This was also through GoToMeeting which I too was excited about. When I called support they said that it happens sometimes but rarely. I asked if it was because I was on the “free trial” period but they said no that it’s the same service regardless of free trial or not.
Were you on free trial when you ran into problems today?
Beth N. Carvin
CEO & President
Nobscot Corporation
http://www.nobscot.com
http://www.mentorscout.com
Alan Whitford Jan 29, 2009 at 2:46 am
Hi David
Sorry that I wasn’t there – but my sympathies go out to you. The ERE community is very strong and I am sure will support the repeat event and continue to support ERE and everything it is doing for our industry.
Best regards
Alan
Jeremy Eskenazi Jan 29, 2009 at 10:57 am
Thanks David for your note. Although there were a lot of audio glitches, we did hear from many people who were able to hear the audio and participate.
We do value the opportunity to rebroadcast this webinar (using another technology tool!), and we have already agreed to do this webinar again on Friday, February 6, 2009 at 2:00PM EST. We are also creating a new recording of the webinar to be posted on ERE as well for people who cannot spend the time again to attend the webinar live.
Thanks again to the entire ERE community.
Jeremy