25% of the estimated 4 billion online and web collaboration meetings held each year aren’t just about listening to presentations. They are about solving problems and making business and technology decisions. In spite of the buzz, most of the web collaboration tools in the marketplace don’t address key productivity pitfalls of these types of meetings.

Web collaboration and web conferencing address the informational meeting, such as a sales demo or an online training session, where knowledge is pushed out, in one direction, to an audience through a PowerPoint or a desktop software application. There may be some limited two way exchange in the form of chat windows and simple polling. However, many of these services don’t address the real productivity issues of decision-making meetings, which have to do with overcoming inhibitions, dealing with dominant political players, and keeping participants fully engaged in a fully interactive way. Online web collaboration meeting software like FacilitatePro flattens meeting politics and keeps people focused on the end goal.

FacilitatePro web collaboration software is designed to capture, organize, prioritize and document ideas. Participants post their ideas via an electronic “note pad” onto an electronic “flip chart” for everyone to see and use. They build on the ideas of others with text, attached documents, images, and web links. The meeting leader transitions the group into decision-making mode by turning the flip chart into a voting ballot and selecting from a variety of voting schemes designed to reach consensus and permit all participants to have a voice in the decisions under consideration. Instant voting results and graphs provide a visual assessment of the level of agreement. Once decisions are made, the action planning mode turns the electronic flip chart into a simple Gantt chart.

Facilitate.com has specializes in web collaboration software tools and techniques that enhance meeting productivity in the conference room or over the web or Internet. Facilitate.com has helped over 200 clients in industry, government and higher education transform meetings into powerful opportunities to solve problems and take decisive action. For more information on their web collaboration software, visit www.facilitate.com .