The success of the remote meeting is good news for organizations like STC, whose chapters have limited budgets. Normally, chapters reimburse speakers for travel costs and overnight accommodations when they travel from afar to present at chapter events. Hosting remote presentations is one way to cut down on some of those costs. Remote meeting software—for the most part—is not free. But, it is inexpensive. The annual subscription price of GoToMeeting is likely to be far less than a chapter spends on speaker travel reimbursement annually.
And, once the chapter owns a subscription, the software allows members to hold meetings anytime. For chapters with meeting attendance issues, remote meeting software provides additional opportunities to provide member value. Instead of holding one evening meeting a month, chapters can hold several at different times and on different days. And, the same software can be used by the chapter leaders to help make board and other business meetings much easier on members. The possibilities are endless.
Remote meetings are also good news for speakers, many of which cannot squeeze long distance travel into their schedules as easily as they would like. Therefore, they must limit the number of speaking engagements they accept. Remote meeting software makes it possible for speakers to more easily participate in more meetings with less travel. This saves speakers time and money and allows them to reach out to audiences they might not otherwise get in front of.
If you have yet to test drive remote presentation software, give GoToMeeting a try! (free 30 day trial)
