Attending an online meeting and watching a presentation. Yippy! Most of us have experienced this ad nauseum. Are we right? Over the last few years, this has become the template for online meetings. Not always, but oftentimes these can equal a great big YAWN if the content isn’t engaging or if we feel a collective loss of productivity. Have you ever felt like something was missing? Something was, it was the ability to interact live and directly via annotation.

Consider what happens when the collaborative process is limited only to the audio feedback and visual gestures from the other meeting attendees. What if a greater degree of interactivity is required directly with the content in order to actually be productive? Humm, actual online meeting productivity?? Let’s all take a deep breath and ponder that 🙂

Productivity Gets Lost In Translation: The Power of Shared Screen Annotation

The iterative process can be significantly impacted in a negative way whenever an idea has to be translated and transposed across media types. Add in time for required post-meeting document modifications, emailing updated copies, making further refinements based upon additional feedback, and perhaps another meeting to sync up, and well, you’ve likely got yourself a TOTAL MESS of lost productivity. It doesn’t have to be this way!

We’ve taken an entirely different approach here at Zoom. Since day one, we’ve been interested in helping our customers skip all of that unproductive nonsense! How you ask? Zoom allows content sharing from anywhere, on any device, and at any time. Period. What’s more? Zoom features annotation AND perhaps even more interesting, co-annotation on shared content (not just a Whiteboard), even from mobile devices – something that is entirely exclusive to Zoom!

Once you’ve shared your screen, you and the other participants can co-annotate the shared content, you can give control over your screen to any given participant. You can use arrows, lines, pen, highlighter, eraser, and more with the annotation feature. For security purposes, it is possible for the host to lock annotations to prevent any inappropriate drawings your team may make on your presentation? Discover more on co-annotations and remote control.

Sounds good but you might be wondering how Zoom is any different in the market as it relates to native productivity features like annotation/co-annotation. Let’s take a closer look at our competitive differentiation.

(1). GoToMeeting iPad app allows users to annotate on the local image ONLY. It does not allow for co-annotation.
(2). Adobe Connect takes a screenshot (bitmap) of the screen being shared, then automatically switches the user interface from screen sharing to Whiteboarding. The captured bitmap is then placed on the Whiteboard.

Get some hands-on experience with Zoom annotation, sign up for a live demo with a Zoom product specialist and we’ll be glad to give you a guided tour!