There's little doubt that mobile tools are permeating most areas of life and livelihood. They are simultaneously expanding our horizons and making the world smaller. Regardless of whether our colleagues, friends and family are in the next room, on the other side of town, or the other side of the globe, we can reach them audibly, visually, editorially – or a combination of the three – in an instant.

And it's a good thing we don't have to wait because our world is fast-paced and we are time poor. We struggle to maintain work/life balance, our email In Boxes are out of control and we cram downtime on trains, planes and in automobiles using the laptop or mobile phone.

Digital technology has made possible the most innovative and accessible methods of interaction between people over great (or not) distances. We are in perpetual motion and our tools of communication move with us.

Adobe's Acrobat® Connect™ is one such tool, taking mobility and communication to another level. This web-conferencing software allows business professionals to communicate and collaborate instantly with extended teams and large audiences through easy-to-use and easy-to-access online personal meeting rooms. With Acrobat Connect Professional, business users can interact with geographically dispersed colleagues and customers in real time, using high-impact presentations and essential collaboration tools, including screen sharing, multipoint video, interactive multimedia applications, integrated telephony, VoIP and whiteboarding.

"Web conferencing can help people work with colleagues and business partners, share information, make better decisions, work on more projects simultaneously and increase the impact of their work." Jeffrey Mann, Gartner

According to Gartner, web conferencing is growing in uptake because it benefits organisations who want to spread their reach far and wide, yet keep the team and company cohesion tightly knit.

"Effective organisations use web conferencing as more than just a substitute for face-to-face meetings. Increased collaboration at all levels is crucial to the high-performance workplace concept. Web conferencing can help people work with colleagues and business partners, share information, make better decisions, work on more projects simultaneously and increase the impact of their work. In some cases, they can offer efficiencies beyond physical meetings (through polls and testing or backroom chats). Reducing travel can provide hard return on investment savings, but improved ways of working can provide far greater benefits."

Not-for-profit men's health organisation, Mensheds Australia, has found that Acrobat Connect Professional has indeed been of significant administrative benefit. In addition to helping the organisation deliver resources, training and detailed information 24 hours a day to geographically disparate groups, Adobe's web conferencing solution has drastically reduced the cost of delivery, travel, training and Occupational Health and Safety compliance.

Individual Mensheds across Australia offer men opportunities for regular social interaction, the promotion of fellowship and support, active participation and learning new skills – especially about health, wellbeing and helping the community.

Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional allows Mensheds Australia to use multimedia to deliver support to even the most remote communities. Members of Mensheds can use their PCs to connect via the Internet to their local groups and individual members without being overwhelmed by the technology.

It is as simple as going to their own unique, designated URL address to access their personal online meeting rooms."When Mensheds commenced operation in 2003, we had already produced approximately 5,000 slides of training programs for small business owners," said Peter Sergeant, managing director of Mensheds Australia. "All of this knowledge was useless unless we could present it compellingly on a grand scale over great distances to potential supporters, members and managers of Mensheds."

Mensheds managers can also interact with the head office of Mensheds Australia and access rich content. Rather than simply disseminating vast numbers of documents, Acrobat Connect Professional has provided Mensheds Australia with an interactive system whereby it is possible to analyse the training progress of the Mensheds managers.

"When we discovered Acrobat Connect Professional and realised how easily we could communicate and collaborate with groups across the country and worldwide, it actually redefined our concept of Mensheds and determined the way that we would operate," continues Sergeant.

Virtual Training
Training programs are critical tools in just about every industry, but with 'time' becoming an increasingly valuable commodity, trainers and educators often need to find new ways to deliver over distance.

Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional means that no longer is it always necessary for trainers and trainees to have to meet in order for the exchange of information and experience to take place. Professional development can now take place at the desktop.

"Acrobat Connect Professional provides a quantum leap for the university in how it is able to deliver courses and engage with students." Philip Roy, eLearning Facilitator for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Massey University

With Acrobat Connect, long-distance discourse doesn't mean the impact gets lost in translation. Acrobat Connect has the tools to make online meetings as effective as if the participants were in the same room. Meeting participants can collaborate with each other in an informal, highly interactive manner with shared screens, applications, images and documents.

New Age Education
New Zealand's Massey University uses Adobe Acrobat Connect Professional to improve educational experiences for students in distance learning classes.

Craig Prichard, a senior lecturer in the Department of Management at Massey University, uses the software to turn Microsoft® Office PowerPoint® presentations into streamed-audio enhanced presentations with voiceover narration. This allows him to broadcast lectures online, as well as hold weekly tutorials and web meetings.

In the live sessions, Prichard can run through study guides and case studies and students can take part and respond using a web environment that emulates the interaction of conventional teaching methods. The interactive element promotes valuable, collaborative learning between students. These live sessions can then be recorded so that students have the opportunity to review content after the session is over – a particularly useful resource for reviewing before exams. Students attending classes on campus also benefit from being able to access this material from home.

Prichard frequently includes interactive surveys, quizzes, anonymous polls, Q&A sessions and multiple-choice questions in his live sessions. The student responses allow Prichard to have instant feedback on the level of understanding that his students have on subjects, so that he can easily expand or clarify concepts that students have not fully comprehended.

Accessible to All
While Acrobat Connect is now being customised to suit the individual needs of leading corporations in Australia such as ING, E*TRADE and JP Morgan, it is not only for organisations with sophisticated technology systems. Acrobat Connect is easy and economical to set up – all that is required is a web browser to access a personal online meeting room and Adobe Flash® Player which is already installed on more than 97% of Internet-connected desktops worldwide. Acrobat Connect's low cost of operation makes it ideal to be widely used throughout an organisation – rather than reserved only for top execs or special projects.

Web conferencing has never been more accessible or practical. Gartner predicts that, by 2010, web conferencing will be available to 75% of corporate users as a standard facility. With Acrobat Connect, online meeting rooms are already as synonymous with productive interaction and collaboration as board rooms.

iMagic Quadrant for Web Conferencing, 2007, Gartner, Jeffrey Mann, 1 May 2007