Video conferencing is — suddenly — bigger than ever. In a matter of months, the world has turned to virtual meetings and video calls as an essential form of communication to better cope with quarantine.
Everything from yoga classes to school lessons and virtual nights out have migrated to video platforms like Zoom. Even daily cabinet meetings from the UK government are being hosted virtually.
The boom to video conferencing, however, only serves to heighten privacy and security concerns on certain platforms. Furthermore, some users find they need to pay premium prices to host live events or exceed invite limits.
This is the problem which faced Turkish MVP Daron Yöndem. In his efforts to host technical conference sessions and webinars for the software community, Daron soon realized the limitations of popular video platforms. He did not want to take on additional costs for the ability to host up to 1500 people, nor did he want to set up encoder software to source the selected video conferencing system.
It should have been simple — Daron just wanted to mass video conference without issue. As he soon found out, though, there are not many solutions which fit his specifications. And so, with his specific video conferencing requirements in mind, he turned to Microsoft Teams.
To his surprise, Daron discovered a “live” feature which ticked every box.
“A regular Teams meeting can accommodate up to 250 participants, but a live event can host 10.000 attendees!” Daron said. “The underlying platform for Live events is pretty robust thanks to Azure Media Services and Azure CDN. You can have multiple presenters, multiple desktop sharing sessions, and split-screen if needed.”
While Microsoft MVPs are likely well-versed in virtual meetings and video conferencing, they are perhaps unaware that their Office 365 subscription includes the ability to host Teams Live events.
This is a practically free solution for MVPs — considering every MVP gets an Office 365 subscription — but is also cost-effective for everyday users, with plans as low as $2.50 per month.
“In my case, I was not aware that there was such a thing called Teams live events that we were already paying for!” Daron says.
On top of usability, Daron says he enjoys the ability to get a full list of attendees and their contact information in any video conference. Daron — a 12-time MVP specializing in AI and Microsoft Azure solutions — also says the solution boasts live closed captioning and translation support.
If video conferencing is here to stay, it needs to offer secure and user-friendly solutions. For Daron, and in his opinion all MVPs, that solution is Microsoft Teams and its “live” feature.
For more information on Microsft Teams Live, check out Daron’s blog.
