Ken,
At my company, we have happily used Glance Web Conferencing, a "plain vanilla," low-cost competitor to WebEx or GoToMeeeting, for years. It's incredibly simple: anything you can display on a computer screen locally can be seen by anyone who joins the Web conference. This is not "video conferencing;" it will show anything you display on your screen, whether PowerPoint or any other program or image, but it will not transmit live video. For that, however, you could use Skype as a very low-cost alternative. This would require two computers/screens at each end of the conference, one to transmit the video of the participants, the other to transmit the content. Glance has an audio-conference component, so you could transmit voice over a separate telephone line for highest audio quality.
This may all sound complicated, but it is actually very simple. The advantages of delivering content, video, and audio via three separate "channels," if you will, are:
1.) The equipment needed on either end (computer projector or large flat-panel screen; speaker phone, Webcam) is cheap and may already be owned by all participants.
2.) You will minimize bandwidth issues.
3.) Remote participants don't need to install and configure any special software; all they need is a Web browser.
4.) Glance hosting software is very simple to install and configure, and because of its simplicity, much easier for everyone to use than either WebEx or GoToMeeting.
I don't know whether you could use Glance in trial or demo mode for this purpose, but a single Glance license is only $499/yr. You can check out their service at
www.glance.net.
I hope that helps!
Cheers,
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Michael Tardif Assoc. AIA, CSI, Hon. SDA, LEED AP
Director, Integrated Project Delivery Systems
Grunley Construction Company, Inc.
Rockville MD
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