TechEd 2007: New Office Live Meeting Will Enable Multi-session 'Events'

ORLANDO - Product managers at TechEd 2007 here gave BetaNews an early glimpse of Microsoft's next videoconferencing application, which will tie into both Office Communications Server (which we saw in detail at WinHEC three weeks ago) and Microsoft's own subscription-based conferencing services.

Office Live Meeting 2007 will give attendees of virtual meetings and conferences a single, simple frame from which to view conferences - an important advance, especially in view of the abundance of browser-based conference schemes where the video appears in a postage stamp.

But perhaps most important are the advances meeting organizers will see: Tools will become available for organizers to build entire virtual events, similar to the "Virtual TechEd" that Microsoft produces for itself. There, organizers can stream multiple sessions to groups and subgroups of attendees, and subgroups can even be formed on the fly, "forking" off from main groups.

Both live and recorded sessions can be supported for these virtual event streams, so video playback is supported. We were surprised to learn that Flash appears to be the streaming format of choice, or at least the format about which product managers were informed; whether recordings support Silverlight is to be determined.

Organizers are also given tools with which to create quizzes after a session or event, and grading utilities that can produce individual or aggregate reports on attendee grades.

Presently, the client is referred to as "the 2007 release of Office Live Meeting," including in company press releases and brochures, leading us to think a more concatenated name may be in the works. Stay in touch with BetaNews for more from TechEd 2007 in Orlando as it happens.