Elluminate session

We just had our H807 Elluminate session.
I didn't want to pour my frustration into the forum.

The session started very good. We sorted some sound problems and then it worked quite well.
We had the micros open for everyone. We talk easily, arranged slides, adjusted pictures together, wrote some explanations. As long as the technology worked fine, it was fun.

But...
After sharing the screen I lost the connection for some minutes totally.
The system reconnected, but starting from then I had problems with ether the micro or the headphones. The sound went on and off for a while every 20 seconds. The sound was gone for about 2-3 minutes. When it came back the recording of the lost minutes started at the same time. So I had the privilege to hear two conversations in parallel. My technical problems disturbed the discussion immensely. For me it was frustrating. I could not follow the discussion. During the periods I had no problems my participation level went down, because I wasn't sure if I could end my sentence or hear the reply. Maybe a solution would have been to leave the session and come back in again as a reset. Next time I will try that.
It was also confusing that my menus had different languages. My drop-down menus are all in German and seemed a little different.

My conclusion:
It makes sense in a presentation modus, where travelling to a face-to-face meeting would be inefficient.
It seems to be a good tool, if you need to discuss certain topics and share documents or software.

For occasional use the technology is not yet reliable enough and the general literacy in using web conferencing tools is still low.
Both, technique and literacy, needs to develop to move the tool beyond 'can you hear me'. As Derek and Katherine discussed, it is very disturbing and frustrating if you mention an important point or express a good idea and there is no response. It does not make it any better if that was just caused by technical problems. It interrupts the flow and disrupts the conversation. Participants learn quickly and do not take the effort to really go into a discussion.

I would like to use the tool if I would have to work frequently with a group of people, which I could not meet otherwise. I would take the time to really understand the technology and its features as well as how to solve the common problems. It would be important to think about lost content and conversation rules to have less frustrating situations. When using the tool frequently the group would find out how to make most of its features.

For teaching or training, I would only use Elluminate if is used frequently. I am not sure if there would be a lot of interaction. The wide majority of users does not accept poor performance and is not prepared to solve technical problems. They will just not use the tool. Stability and quality of sound and system are most vital.
On top, tools need to be easy to understand and use (affordances) – we all expect plug and play. Only tools that offer very specific features that cannot be replaced with an easy application (e.g. graphic software, ...) make people take time to get to know the software in more depth.