Today I was chairing an online conference linked to the Muvenation project, the University of Macerata provided Acrobat Connect Pro as the platform for this. Adobe advertise this as the "Next best thing to meeting in person". Certainly the platform is powerful allowing: voice, video, shared whiteboard, files, chat, voting etc; however the use was not without incident.

The conference was ably hosted by Lorenzo from Macerata, and there were 5 presenters including me. All the presenters had practiced before hand, but unfortunately for 4 of us the gremlins crept in.

The first speaker was only able to hear some people and to be heard by others, this was solved by re-booting.
The second speaker appeared to experience no difficulties.
The third speaker could not be heard by anyone, and needed to get a new microphone.
The fourth speakers slides developed a life of their own, and seemed to change with out any interaction. Several minutes were spent on this, and eventually the speaker shared her desktop instead.
I had thought I was safe from problems, but after more than 2 hours my mouse froze, the camera continued to work. I couldn't get any where in resolving this, and so had to phone the second speaker to take over chairing while I re-booted.

I definitely like the concept of Connect Pro, but as with any online event trying to chair this was very stressful, all the practice we had engaged in helped us understand options but it hadn't prepared us for thedilemmas that faced us on the day. If I am asked to participate in such an event in future I would want details of the contingency plans for loss ofconnection by anyone.