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Breeze Article

Lessons Learned from a Former Breeze Newbie

Jonathan Kaye, PhD

www.amethystinteractive.com
www.FlashSim.com

With my business, I speak at conferences and teach classes on designing and building complex equipment simulations for mission-critical operator training and certification. In the past, I conducted these sessions onsite, at various conference or client locations.

In 2004, Macromedia began offering a free trial of Macromedia Breeze Meeting, and I began to explore how to reach those interested in the growing field of equipment simulation. In one month's time, I used Breeze Meeting in a variety of interactive presentations and meetings. In this article, I summarize what I have learned from being a presenter, using Breeze Meeting, Captivate (formerly RoboDemo), and Flash.

I also wrote this article to provide something to you that I wish I had found before starting my experiences with these tools. First, I give an overview of how I used the tools together. Then, I summarize tips for planning on delivering presentations with Breeze Meeting. Lastly, I present an interactive movie, a video, and a checklist to help presenters and participants with using Breeze Meeting.

Requirements

To complete this tutorial you will need to install the following software and files:

• Learn more about Macromedia Breeze and download the free trial.
• The sample files (Captivate (formerly RoboDemo) clips and video) require the Flash Player.
• Prerequisite knowledge: A basic familiarity with the purpose and format of web conferencing tools such as Breeze Meeting, and simple terminology of related products such as Flash and Captivate (formerly RoboDemo).

Case Study: An Overview of Using Breeze Meeting, Flash, and Captivate (formerly RoboDemo)

Over the past couple of years, I investigated whether to use web conferencing software as part of my business. While I was excited by the potential, I weighed whether the costs would outweigh the benefits for my small company. The opportunity to try Breeze Meeting gave me compelling evidence that such a technology is a necessary part of my business.

In the following sections, I explain how I used the Breeze Meeting trial to deliver the following communications:

• Ten, two-hour developer seminars
• Six client meetings
• Three conversations with my remote developer teams
• Two conference talks

Ten Two-Hour Developer Seminars

I found a niche in the e-Learning community to complement my company’s project development services for performance-based training on equipment. Today, most of my business involves teaching the best practice methodologies for designing and building equipment simulations, as described in the book I co-wrote in 2002, Flash MX for Interactive Simulation: How to Construct and Use Device Simulations. The live training consists of management lectures, developer seminars, and half-day, full-day, and customized-length workshops. Also, I am currently creating full-semester courses, which I will deliver online.

As a technical introduction to the programming methodologies, I prepared a two-hour, two-part presentation called “Introduction to Programming Equipment Simulators in Flash.” Part 1 is an introduction to the concepts of building simulators, focusing on UML Statecharts. Part 2 is a guided application of the methodologies, in which I step participants through the design and construction of two simple traffic light examples (Figure 1).

I offered the seminars eight times to the public, and twice to private groups. In half of the sessions, attendees connected to the presentation on their own; in the other half of the sessions, a mix of shared connections (groups of people at one site) and individual connections attended.

Figure 1a. In part 2 of the seminar, users applied the methodologies to build a simple traffic light system.

(+) View demo

Figure 1b. Next, users built a more complex traffic light system.

(+) View demo

Part 1, which is about concepts, lasted approximately one hour and gave attendees the following experience:

• I talked over Microsoft PowerPoint slides
• Communicated with the participants through text chat
• Displayed canned animations prepared with Captivate (formerly RoboDemo) to demonstrate pre-scripted examples
• Presented examples made with Flash that participants could interact with
• Took polls to ensure the participants understood the concepts. (Early participant feedback prompted me to prepare slide handouts that participants could download before and after the session.)

Initially, I worried about keeping their attention for the hour, but participants confirmed that the operation was smooth and that they were sufficiently engaged with meaningful, interactive exercises. While I’d like to believe it was mostly due to my engaging charm and witty repartee, in all honesty, I think the most successful aspect was presenting participants with engaging interactive examples, with which they could experiment and review the lesson while I presented concepts. Unfortunately, one user connection in almost every session had some technical difficulties and had to re-enter the meeting, sometimes several times. It was unclear where the breakdown occurred.

All Captivate (formerly RoboDemo) examples in the presentation had playback controls embedded within them, so that each user could pause and replay any part of the Captivate (formerly RoboDemo) movie (a SWF file). In fact, when you open a SWF file directly in Breeze Meeting, users can interact with the example. Often, I used the pointer overlay to call attention to areas I described. When you open a SWF movie, every user sees the movie, but each user cannot see what any of the other users are doing. I sorely missed the ability to see what my users were doing, for example, to answer a question. While I could have gone into screen share mode and have the user show me what he or she was doing, I would have lost the fluidity of the animation because screen share updating occurs, at most, a few times a second.

Since Breeze is based in Macromedia Flash, my Flash movies displayed at a suitably responsive refresh interval. I think that when a developer or programmer eventually customizes a module (called a “pod”) to permit event sharing within SWFs, Breeze will lead users to an exciting dimension for real-time, live product support and training—imagine a trainer teaching a remote customer or salesperson to use a product by demonstrating functionality through simulated equipment.

You cannot open certain Flash movies within Breeze, In these cases, I linked to the movies from web pages and directed the users to browse to the pages. I used this method to show animations made with the full-motion video feature in Macromedia Captivate (formerly RoboDemo) 5. This approach was better than launching SWFs within Breeze, in some ways, because the SWF movie could run at its native rate—SWFs inside Breeze always run at 30 frames per second. The drawback to this technique is that it moves the user outside of the Breeze application, and outside of the presenter's control.

After a ten-minute break following Part 1, I began Part 2, which lasts for 45 minutes and demonstrates how to build an application using the concepts presented in Part 1. In Part 2, I coaxed the participants into a more hands-on approach, using the whiteboard to collaboratively design the systems, using text chat for questions, answers, and discussions, and using screen and application sharing to illustrate how to program the systems.

In Breeze, you can arrange the layout of the pods (whiteboard, slides, chat, and so forth), which helps enormously (see Figure 2). For example, once I worked with the participants to design the traffic light system on the whiteboard, I could switch to a layout for programming (more screen sharing), reducing the size of the whiteboard, while it was still visible (notice the whiteboard in Figure 2 remains visible in Figure 3, but is reduced in size). Using this simple feature, I could maximize the size and adjust the layout, focusing on the primary elements for the current interaction.

Although the participants communicated with me primarily through text chat, they also used their microphones through Breeze’s VoIP (Voice over IP) feature when they felt they could express themselves better through voice. Obviously, this feature worked best when the delays in audio communication were small. As I point out in the Mechanics of Preparing and Delivering Presentations in Breeze Meeting section, you can tell Breeze to freeze your web cam video and mute your microphone when you are not trying to communicate. This ensures you don’t use extra bandwidth transmitting your distracting office noises unnecessarily.

Figure 2. Working on the whiteboard

Figure 3. Screen share with whiteboard visible

In two of the ten seminars, I asked participants to assist in programming the simulations (typing code through the application sharing feature). During each seminar, I decided whether I thought there was enough time, and whether the volunteers were comfortable enough with the interface to accomplish the objectives.

The most feedback I received was about the whiteboard. Some users commented on its responsiveness, and others about its usability (tools, color selection, and so forth). Certainly a presenter can make the process of using the whiteboard easier for users—as a presenter, you have to be very clear what you want the participants to do; don't just open up the whiteboard for brainstorming. Also, having the users watch an introductory movie would have made the users' experiences more smooth. I go into more details on lessons learned later in this article.

Client and Technical Development Meetings

The client meetings and the meetings with my co-developer teams were much like Part 2 of the developer seminar—focused on guided interaction. Based on what I had learned, I made appropriate layouts to emphasize the whiteboard, marking up slides, and screen sharing. Because these meetings involved extensive dialogue, I used telephones for audio rather than VoIP.

In general, people who had not experienced Breeze, or had done so only at conferences or user groups were impressed—even those who had used other web conferencing software. In particular, being able to launch SWF movies within Breeze instead of launching them in separate browser windows helped. We used the whiteboard extensively during development meetings, and there were fewer complaints than in the developer seminars. I believe this was due to the participants having a greater opportunity to practice using the tools.

A pleasant and unanticipated added value of conducting these meetings remotely was the ability to record them. We replayed particular client comments, observations, and concerns. We could document the brainstorming sessions and meeting notes. I see our team using these meeting recordings to make future meetings more efficient or to help team members who could not make the meetings get up-to-speed more quickly.

Conference Talks

I presented two conference talks with Breeze: first, at a conference on Smart Medical Technologies hosted by NASA, and second, as part of a symposium on online simulation (through the e-Learning Forum). In each conference, I spoke to a group of 50-100 people. There were a couple of additional remote participants and a facilitator onsite to moderate the conference, but the opportunity for interaction was very limited.

Figure 4. Canned demonstration of preparing blood sample for analysis

Because I could not rely on participation (it was very difficult to read the audience through my limited views), I kept the presentation as short as possible—saving the interactive user segment for after the presentation. Therefore, I used basic features such as slides, scripted Captivate (formerly RoboDemo) examples, text chat, and demonstrations through screen sharing (the audience viewing my desktop in real-time) for more dynamic and complex interactions.

Being a remote presenter was a great advantage in terms of time and logistic expenses, but so much of the value of conferences is in the face-to-face interaction, the approachability of the speaker, and the networking opportunities. For example, in the talk I gave to NASA, the only question I received was which software I was using to do the presentation. Furthermore, I arranged to be available during the break for individual questions and answers; surprisingly, no one in the audience of 100 people took advantage of this.

The lessons I learned from this experience was to use web conferencing software for:

• Meetings that one simply cannot attend in person
• When you are part of a session led by an onsite presenter, or someone onsite can take an active role in the presentation
• To identify which groups or individuals to follow up with on a more personal level. For example, you might do a national product launch in this format, followed up with scheduled interactive meetings with regional groups.

Case Study Summary

Overall, I was very pleased with Breeze Meeting—by its feature set and interface intuitiveness—as were the meeting participants.

Now to answer the question I posed at the beginning of this article: Is this type of tool necessary for my business? It is necessary because I want to reduce the expenses related to client and developer meetings (I work with groups all around the world), as well as the additional revenue from remote developer training.

Medium and large companies today clearly need some type of web conferencing tool. However, this experience has convinced me that even a small company like mine, of five to ten people, needs a web conferencing tool, especially as we work with remote project teams and work for remote clients. I recommend trying Macromedia Breeze to see how it can benefit your company—I think you will be pleasantly surprised. In the following sections, I explain lessons learned from using Breeze.

The Mechanics of Preparing and Delivering Presentations in Breeze Meeting

Planning the Content and Delivery

• Using interactive demonstrations for participants: Interaction is a great way to maintain participant attention; however, the interaction has to be meaningful and relevant to the content, not just something to act as a wakeup call. Be as clear as possible about what you expect the participant to do. If you want the participant to try something, make the task(s) very specific. For instance, if I want to demonstrate anything more than a simple sequence, I do one of the following:

  • Record it using Captivate (formerly RoboDemo)
  • Prepare a custom animation
  • Demonstrate it live using screen sharing.

  While not technically an interactive demonstration, I’ve found that polls are a convenient and easy way to stimulate discussion and verify your audience follows your content.

• Preparing examples in Flash: Consider the following tips when using Flash in Breeze:

  • Do not depend on the _root keyword
  • Recognize that the SWF files run at 30 frames per second, regardless of the frame rate set in the SWF files
  • If you use the setInterval property, provide a way for participants to cancel the timers before closing the SWF file, otherwise your intervals will continue to be called if the user views the SWF file again during the session

• Preparing examples in Captivate (formerly RoboDemo): Use Captivate (formerly RoboDemo) when you want to demonstrate a precise sequence of interactions. Then, play the sequence or modify it for participant interaction.

  To make a Captivate (formerly RoboDemo) movie interactive, you do the following:

  • Find the frame on which you want user interaction
  • Hide the mouse (and associated click sounds)
  • Make the user click on the spot that activates the interaction (such as pulling down a menu), or add a button that the user clicks

  Here are some other tips for using Captivate (formerly RoboDemo) movies:

  • Recording movies for use in Breeze: Keep demonstrations as short and small. If you use full-motion recording, play it back outside of Breeze, as the scaling that occurs within Breeze may break up moving images. With full-motion recording, I placed the movies on the web and launched them through the participants browser (through a Web Links pod).
  • Adding captions: Adding captions was easy, but I got a little confused with timing when I had captions and interactivity on the same frame. Captions faded out before the interaction. You can modify the interaction (the click box, for example) by right-clicking it; a menu option appears that you can use to associate the caption with the interactivity.
  • Simulating responses to interaction: After an interaction, I was at first choosing the option to “Continue” with the movie, but it's best to use the “Go to Frame” option.
• Using Application Sharing: Application sharing (allowing remote participants to interact with applications on the presenter’s computer) is an area that requires practice. I recommend that if you need to use application sharing with participants who have not done it before, that you keep the interactions extremely simple.
• Using the Whiteboard: For the situations that I taught to new users, I would have preferred a simplified whiteboard, perhaps just a pen tool and a text tool. The great thing about Breeze is that this is something that a developer or programmer who wants to extend Breeze capabilities could write fairly easily!
• Freezing live video: While it is nice for users to see a little talking head during the presentation, I prefer to frame a good shot at the beginning of the presentation and then freeze the camera by clicking the camera icon when your cursor is over your video window. Breeze gives you all sorts of options for video, such as high quality, fast, and slow. But unless you want to use the video for something other than your own headshot, I suggest freezing the camera as well.

• Numbering your content in the “Show Pods” menu: The “Show Pods” menu contains all the custom content you’ve uploaded and named for your presentation. Even if you name your pods meaningfully, it still may confuse you during the presentation as you try to find the content from your list of items. A better approach is to prefix a number to the name, in the order you plan to use the content (thanks to Tom King for this gem!). If you have more than nine items, prefix a zero to the first nine so that Breeze orders the list properly.

• Using layouts: You’ve heard that many people who use Internet browsers never bother to change the initial home page? Similarly, there are Breeze presenters who don’t bother customizing the layouts. One of the greatest features in Breeze is the ability to place and size your pods in the arrangement most suitable for the content or interaction in the current segment of your presentation. Layouts are simply arrangements of the loaded pods, so you can preserve pods across different layouts, as I mentioned in the article’s example of keeping the finished whiteboard visible during programming.

Delivery of Content

Here are some observations about giving a presentation that retains a professional image.

• Remote Monitor. It is essential that you use a remote monitor when you present. Log in as a participant so that you know what the audience sees. I set up a second computer next to my main computer so I could glance at it to verify the right material has loaded before beginning to explain it. It had also helped me catch a few times when I had pointed things out on my presenter machine using my cursor, but I had forgotten to turn on the visible pointer for the audience.

• Low-Bandwidth Meetings. Most meetings end up with some connections that are not very fast, so it is always worth considering elements that can unnecessarily tie up to valuable communication bandwidth. Here's what I consider:

  • Make sure your meeting connection speed is set appropriately, and ensure that the participants know to set their speeds as well
  • Close non-essential applications running on your machine
  • Don’t allow participants to broadcast audio or video
  • Use a telephone or conference call instead of VoIP, if possible
  • Freeze your web cam image, or set it to “slow” refresh, if absolutely necessary
  • If you use screen share, reduce your screen to the smallest reasonable resolution
  • Instead of screen sharing to browse interesting websites together, use the Web Links pod to open them in the participant’s browser; then tell your the participants to look at the site
• Record Your Meetings. Since Breeze records events rather than screen shots, you can play the recording at whichever size you’d like, and all the interactive SWF files that a typical participant would manipulate can be manipulated (but not re-recorded) during playback. Let’s say, for example, a customer or salesperson was unable to attend the presentation, or wanted to view it later. That person could play the recording and still interact with any interactive SWF’s presented, instead of passivly watching the recording.

Resources for Presenters and Participants

• Being a Breeze Meeting Presenter, I want to share a pre-flight checklist I used for my presentations.

Preparation Checklist for Presenters

1. Turn off the screen saver in presenter machine.
2. Set the screen to a low resolution (such as 800 x 600).
3. Clear and organize your desktop.
4. Shut down non-essential applications (including IM, MSN, and so forth).
5. Turn off your telephone. Close your door and hang a “Do not disturb” sign on the outside.
6. Start the applications that you will share.
7. Start your remote monitor.
8. Turn off the screen saver on your remote monitor.
9. Test audio (whether through Breeze or telephone).
10. Turn off the remote monitor’s audio.
11. Check the presenter’s speaker volume. Check whether there is any audio feedback.
12. Set connection speeds for presentation.
13. Wear something nice!
14. Delete pods you don’t need. Select Organize Pods from the menu (such as file share, notes). This makes it quicker for you to access the pods you use.
15. Put the remote monitor’s mouse nearby to close the browser when using hyperlinks.
16. Have your Breeze log-on ready. If you’re doing screen share and accidentally close Breeze (not that this has happened to me) you'll be able to access the Breeze presenter interface more quickly.
17. If the meeting is informal, keep a notepad nearby to note presentation ideas and mistakes.
18. Start recording!

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Where to Go from Here

In the Resources section, I provide an online, introductory video that demonstrates features of Breeze Meeting both from the presenter and participant views.

Some additional materials for this article:

• Using embedded Macromedia Flash movies (TechNote 16818)

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Tony Profeta and the members of the Art Institute of Philadelphia’s Multimedia Club for helping me to prepare and edit the accompanying Flash videos. I also greatly appreciate the suggestions and advice from Tom King and Silke Fleischer at Macromedia.

About the author