In these tough economic times using GoToMeeting can save money and resources. GoToMeeting allows people to attend the meeting right from their desk. This means, no travel expense, no lost time before and after the meeting. All it takes is for one of the participants to be subscribed to GoToMeeting for less than $50 per month. Imagine if you have employees involved with meetings at other locations, let’s say ten each month. How many hours do they spend commuting to and from the meeting. They pay for gas and probably some food. They are trying to keep up with their work through their cel phone or blackberry.

With GoToMeeting, they simply take a break at their desk, attend the meeting, and they are right at their desk, fully prepared to immediately act upon the decisions made in the meeting.

The Official Site of GoToMeeting
http://www.gotomeeting.com

GoToMeeting’s Extensive Support Library
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/default/help/g2m/g2m_user_help.htm

More GoToMeeting Reviews
http://gotomeeting.rightsecure.net/

Citrix, The Company That Makes GoToMeeting
http://www.citrix.com

GoToMeeting information at Yahoo
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=gotomeeting+reviews

Register online by creating a username and password for your account. Once registered, you’ll be able to host an unlimited number of online meetings with anyone. Your meeting attendees don’t have to be GoToMeeting registered users and can attend your meetings for free. Refer to the My Account page to obtain online billing history, view plan information and modify account information.

The automatic setup takes seconds, and no configuration is required. GoToMeeting will download to your PC or Mac and enable you to host and join online meetings with a few clicks. Begin by hosting a meeting through the GoToMeeting Web site, via Microsoft® Outlook® and through instant-messaging applications.

Even novices can begin organizing on-the-fly or scheduled meetings with absolutely no training. You can start a meeting immediately or schedule it for later. Begin presenting and sharing applications or documents with your business contacts across the country or with your colleagues down the hall.
Easy for Your Attendees, Too
Your meeting attendees can easily join your meetings in seconds – they just click a link in an emailed meeting invitation or enter the meeting ID at JoinGoToMeeting.com.

No configuration
No pre-loaded software
No purchase or registration required

Getting started with GoToMeeting couldn’t be simpler, so follow these steps and start meeting online today!

GoToMeeting

We tried GoToMeeting to meet with some of our top donors in order to review our quarterly reports and let them know how their donations are being spent and looking for feedback from them. Normally this entails many phone calls and emails over the course of a month. This made the choice to try GoToMeeting easy but the big question was “How easy will it be for our donors to join in from home?”. Many of them are senior citizens and only half of them had microphones readily available at their PC’s so we opted to use a phone conference in conjunction with the meeting as opposed to using the VOIP that comes with GoToMeeting (participants who wanted to speak would need to have a microphone on their PC and as I said some of them could not find their microphones.)

We sent everyone their meeting invitations by email and made sure that they received it. When it came time for the meeting all of them were connected and signed in without a problem. One person had trouble joining the phone conference and we walked them through it via a quick chat in the GoToMeeting interface. I thought it was interesting that getting everyone into the phone conference was harder than getting everyone into a GoToMeeting meeting.

It worked beautifully and saved everyone a bunch of time. We’ve decided to continue using the phone conference in conjunction with GoToMeeting so I can’t speak for the effectiveness of the VOIP features but it’s a great fit for this group.

Is GoToMeeting Really Worth the Money?
A month ago, I would have argued that for small groups or infrequent use for meetings among peers would not warrant the purchase of GoToMeeting. A combination of teleconferencing and tools that nearly everyone already has like Netmeeting would be sufficient. For large meetings, meetings with VIP’s or meetings with important clients I would have said that it was the best at the best price however, I still didn’t like the fact that it required a phone conference in addition to the online meeting.

Now it has all changed. A very good product has become a great product. GoToMeeting made some changes early in July that address its shortcomings head on.

First, they added VOiP. This eliminates the need for a second phone conference being used as long as the participants have microphones and speakers on their PC’s or laptops. It is very easy to use and does not require any technical knowledge to implement.

Secondly, and this makes my graphics and design department ecstatic, they have added full support for Apple Macintosh. Now Mac users can organize meetings with the same ease as Windows users.

With these new additions to the product while keeping its price below $50 a month is incredible. It is a tiny tiny fraction of the cost of our old conferencing system. Now we can put together a meeting and have everyone together and comfortable at their own workstations in under half an hour.

There is nothing out there that comes close for the price.

By Brian Meals

We tried the new version 4.0 of GoToMeeting today and I felt that I should make an addendum of sorts to the review that I posted here…

The biggest changes for us are twofold.

1. VOIP (Voice Over IP) eliminates the need to have a simultaneous phone conference and truly makes it so that we can all meet as long as the attendees have at least wifi access. Now, if your computer has a microphone and speakers you can speak over the computer connection with each other.

2. The main program for the organizer now runs on Apple Macintoshes. (instead of having an icon in the taskbar as on Windows, the Mac version puts a shortcut on your desktop).

By Brian Meals

It started with my downloading the free trial. To download it, I had to enter some basic information but then it asked for my credit card info. I wasn’t really ready to commit to my choice that deeply so I balked. I immediately received an email from GoToMeeting (I entered my email before it asked for the credit card) offering me a free trial that does not require a credit card. I proceeded to go through the process of downloading and installing the software. It was quick and easy. The software installed an icon in my systray on my PC.

Clicking on the icon revealed a menu from which I selected “Schedule a Meeting” I was presented with a straight forward selection of options and entries to make. In order to talk to each other during a GoToMeeting meeting, you need to use a telephone and set up a conference call. GoToMeeting provides this for you but we already have a service that we use for conference calling and I was able to enter our service’s information to be used instead of using GoToMeeting’s conference call system. Then I clicked SCHEDULE and the meeting was scheduled including putting a meeting reminder in my Outlook calendar (which I like).

Next, to invite people to my meeting, I clicked on the icon in my systray again and chose “My Meetings”. In the screen that opened I was able to select the meeting I scheduled and click the INVITE button. A nice pre-typed email message popped up and all I had to do was edit the Subject and enter the addresses of three people that I wanted to test this with. Then I sent the email.

When it was time for the meeting to start, I started the phone teleconference then I clicked on the icon in my systray again and chose “My Meetings”. This time I selected my meeting and clicked the START button. A real clean interface of controls showed up on the right side of my monitor and I saw that my three attendees were already there. They did not have any problems joining the meeting through their web browser.

It was very easy to switch between attendees desktops and make different people the presenter. Now we use it regularly.

We purchased the basic GoToMeeting product since it fulfills are needs and it is less than $50 per month.

You can try the free trial here.

Organizer Role Overview Organizers have accounts with GoToMeeting that enable them to schedule and conduct meetings. An organizer must be present at the start of any meeting as the meeting host. Organizers need to first create their accounts and download the GoToMeeting software on their computers before they can schedule or conduct meetings. Organizers are responsible for creating scheduled meetings or starting impromptu meetings. Organizers invite attendees and may do so via phone, email or instant message. GoToMeeting meetings can be started from the GoToMeeting system tray icon, the GoToMeeting Web site, the GoToMeeting Outlook bar or the GoToMeeting Messenger button. Once a meeting starts, the organizer becomes the meeting presenter. During the meeting, the organizer may pass the role of presenter to other attendees or promote an attendee to co- organizer.

A free Trial of GoToMeeting can be found here

More reviews can be found here

Only the meeting organizer needs to download the free trial at GoToMeeting Free Version

Prior to Meeting Start If you plan to share your entire desktop, turn off any instant-messaging applications,
notification software or other programs that may interrupt or distract from the meeting. Turn off any streaming media applications that may take up bandwidth and resource-
intensive applications that may be taxing processor ability. Set the desktop display to a neutral background and adjust display settings to a mid-range
resolution (e.g., 1024×768 )
to improve the display for attendees with lesser settings. This is
also the optimal setting for recording a meeting. Clean up your desktop before a meeting. Eliminate wallpaper and icons that may distract
your attendees. Have the documents you wish to share ready to be accessed in one or two clicks. Run a trial meeting with a friend to anticipate questions and to familiarize yourself with the
format of your online presentation.

Managing the Meeting Arrive a few minutes early to greet the attendees as they arrive and start the meeting on
time. It also helps to have a welcome presentation running during this time. Your presence
in these opening minutes can help establish the tone and direction of the meeting. Create a welcome message under the Meetings tab of the organizers preferences to greet
your attendees as they arrive at the meeting. Provide an agenda at the start of the meeting, including estimated duration, and stick to it. Inform attendees what the purpose/goal of the meeting is, what to expect and when and
how to ask questions and participate in the meeting. Provide information on how to use equipment or services and how to get assistance if
needed. Nominate a co-organizer to monitor and respond to the chat log when someone is
presenting. Encourage participation by using open questions such as “What would you suggest?” and
“How do you feel about…?” End the meeting clearly. Make sure all the attendees know that the meeting is formally over
and stay on the line to address any last questions.

Managing the Conference Call Call in to the meeting from a location where there is little background noise. Consider globally muting participants at the start of the meeting to avoid noise issues. Turn
off system prompts and sounds for when attendees join or leave a meeting. Avoid using cellular and cordless phones because of static and use the phone handset or a
headset instead of speakerphones because of background noise, tunnel effect and sentence
clipping. Turn off your call waiting. The beep of a new call on another line is heard by everyone on
the teleconference. Avoid putting your phone on hold during a teleconference. Your hold music will play into the
conference call, and make it impossible for the other attendees to continue the meeting. Introduce yourself when you begin speaking and ask other attendees to also identify
themselves before speaking. Not everyone in the meeting may know everyone else’s voice. If you find you are having a sound quality issue, hang up and dial back in. Sometimes these
problems clear themselves up when the bad connection is terminated.