All organisations need efficient and effective communications with their customers. Professional institutions need to go one better. To maintain their position at the forefront of their sectors, professional institutions need to be able to reach out and inform and to lead.

They also need to involve their members in the activities of the organisation – wherever they happen to be in the world.

Now imagine a tool which allows an institution to run live interactive events for large audiences; enabling them to participate as individuals: making their contributions and asking questions of the presenters in real time.

i-Seminars, created by Interwise Inc. and brought to the SET sector in the UK by scenta, does just that.

i-Seminars is an advanced web conferencing tool which allows organisations to:

• Set up live interactive web events to include several thousand members at the same time
• Allow members to see and hear visual presentations using graphics, slides, documents and video
• Hear questions and feedback from the participants in a controlled and organised manner
• Respond appropriately by initiating an open two-way dialogue
• Record and, if necessary, edit the events and store for later use
   

For the professional institution, i-Seminars represents the best opportunity for real-time communication with its members.

For the members, it is the next best thing to being at a real seminar – with the convenience of being able to do so from the comfort of their home or workplace.

Continuous Development

As a CPD tool, i-Seminars is second to none. Training events can be created and linked together to form programmes. Students from all corners of the globe can watch, listen and learn – and, of course, ask questions and take part in the debate.

Course tutors can check for understanding by asking their own questions of the students and by setting more structured formal tests during the event.

Attendances are automatically logged by the system and the information can be used to show verifiable evidence that development is taking place. 
 

Because the sessions can be recorded, they can also be re-used by the institution and become a valuable resource  

The key to all this is scale

For an organisation to gain maximum value from a service like i-Seminars it is essential to be able to set up as many events with as many members as possible with no worries about capacity or cost.

For this reason i-Seminars has been engineered to be virtually limitless in terms of the number who can attend a live session; and the pricing has been created so that, once an organisation is signed up, using it is totally free!

Through scenta, i-Seminars is available to the SET community for a small monthly fee. This allows organisations to have unlimited access to it – and unlimited means an organisation can:

• Set up as many i-Seminars as needed
• Invite and connect as many users to each session as it wishes
• Have the events last as long as needed

So there will never be a need to keep one eye on the clock as the session unfolds – and no need to restrict numbers or close down discussions just when they start to get interesting!

Those already doing it…

Several of the UK’s professional institutions have already made use of this opportunity – some have being doing so for as long as three years. They include:

• IMechE
• Institute of Physics
• SETNET
• IChemE
• IAgrE
• IStructE
• IMarEst
• The Energy Institute
• ICE

To download the recent ICE case study hailing i-Seminars as 'invaluable' click here.

For more information about i-Seminars and i-Meetings and about pricing, please contact Steven Wood at scenta on 020 3206 0416 or email steven.wood@scenta.co.uk