What Is Video Conferencing?
Video conferencing is, as you’ve probably guessed, it’s simply a conference that is held via video. Instead of a voice-only conference call service, teams can use video conferences to interact visually and collaborate in real-time.
Benefits of video conferencing solutions & remote interpretation
Many organizations are now conducting meetings via platforms like Skype, Zoom, or GoToMeeting. Verbio’s interpreters can be scheduled to join your meeting or webinar and help broadcast your message to a diverse audience.
- Remote work – With more employees working remotely, traveling, and enjoying flexible schedules, the need for more personal conversations can really only be done with video conferencing software.
- Helps build relationships – With face-to-face communications, you can make a personal connection, pick up on verbal and non-verbal cues and begin to build trust, in addition to perceiving thoughts and feelings.
- Saves money – allows you to have an “in-person” experience without the expense of travel.
- Enables live events – Virtual events benefit hugely from not being restricted to a single place or location. Anyone who attends the event remotely can join from all around the world, as long as they have a device and internet connection. Virtual multi-day conferences, educational sessions, employee training, webinar, sales kick-offs, etc.
- Expand Attendee Base – Because virtual events only require a device with an internet connection, they’re wide open to nearly everyone.
Just remember: Cost and features will vary!
Helpful tips for using the services of Professional Interpreters via platforms like Skype, Zoom, Cisco Webex, Microsoft Teams, or GoToMeeting:
- Schedule interpreting services at least a week in advance if possible and be ready to share any reference materials you may use during the meeting, with the interpreter ahead of time so they can rehearse and research any specialized terminology.
- Share a list of speakers/panelists ahead of time, so interpreters can become familiar with names ahead of time.
- Clearly define the start and end times for your meetings and don’t forget to consider the time zones of your participants.
- Ask everyone to get into the meeting early, about 15 minutes, to work out any last-minute technology challenges, so you can start on time, this would allow you to make sure that the interpreter(s) is ready to go and that all attendees who require interpreters are able to hear them clearly.
- Check internet lines for speed a day in advance if possible, internet capabilities change with load.
- If you are considering recording the meeting, make sure you let attendees know you are doing so in advance.
- Provide meeting links, meeting ID codes, and passwords to interpreters in advance.
- Provide breaks. A good rule of thumb is a five-minute break for a 60-minute meeting and a 15-minute break for a 90-minute meeting.
- Presenters should speak clearly and slowly while presenting material to ensure that interpreters can keep up with the pace of the presentation, have time to do their work, and for their work to be received. Be mindful of delays caused by internet connections.
Here are some ideas for you to use video conferencing at work:
- Team weekly meetings
- New employee training
- Connect remote classrooms
- Quick brainstorming session
- Customer sales pitch
- Q&A sessions
- Interviews
Meeting or Webinar?
As you plan out a virtual event, it’s important to consider the type of setup that makes sense for you, and since there is an extensive list of options to choose from and we cannot possibly cover them all in one article, we’ll be focusing on one of the most widely used platform here – Zoom!
Let’s start by defining whether a Meeting or a Webinar is a better fit for your multilingual event.
| Meetings versus webinars | ||
| Meeting | Webinar | |
| Description | Zoom meetings are ideal for hosting more interactive sessions where you’ll want to have lots of audience participation or break your session into smaller groups. | Think of webinars like a virtual lecture hall or auditorium. Webinars are ideal for large audiences or events that are open to the public. Typically, webinar attendees do not interact with one another. |
| Feature comparison | ||
| Closed captioning | ✔ | ✔ |
| Cost | Free and Paid subscription options available. | Paid Add-on, available to Pro or higher subscriptions. |
| Capacity | Up to 100 with free license, up to 1,000 depending on plan and large meeting add-on. | Ranging between 500-50,000 participants, depending on the license. |
| Practice session | N/A | ✔ |
| Breakout rooms | ✔ | N/A |
| Language Interpretation | ✔ | ✔ |
| *Language interpretation cannot be used in breakout rooms, only the main session of a meeting | ||
For more details on how to use Language Interpretation in your meeting or webinar go HERE.
This is how it works with Zoom!
INTERPRETING – The meeting host will need to start the interpretation feature, to allow the interpreters to provide their own audio channels for the language they are interpreting to. Attendees can then select the audio channel to hear the interpreted audio in their language of choice.
CAPTIONING/LIVE TRANSCRIPT – Zoom has a few options for closed captioning in your meetings and webinars which provides subtitles of the spoken in-meeting communications. This may be used for participants to easily follow the conversations or to meet accessibility requirements for more than 36 million Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing.
IN-MEETING CHAT – this feature allows you to send chat messages to other users within a meeting or a private message to an individual user. As the host, you can choose who the participants can chat with or disable chat entirely.
VERY IMPORTANT:
– The interpreting feature won’t be available with your free account, you must have a Business, Education, or Enterprise account; or Pro account + Webinar add-on plan.
– Language interpretation cannot be used in breakout rooms, only the main session of a meeting.