Are we Connect-ing?
Much touted in the new Acrobat release is “Acrobat Connect“, formerly Macromedia’s Breeze.
By now, I’ve participated in several Connect “sessions” as both presenter and presentee, so I thought I’d offer a few observations.
Connect hasn’t really got anything to do with Acrobat, and I’m really unsure why Connect occupies a prominent place in Acrobat 8.0 at all. Connect is something like WebEx, with some clever interactive tweaks. The polling, chat and status facilities are good, but it’s not a trivial affair, and it’s not really about managing or using documents. It might someday benefit from being pressed into service in the “Acrobat family of products”, but that day isn’t here yet.
In the present incarnation, Connect can’t actually use PDF files except in a desktop-sharing (ie, bandwidth-intensive) mode. This simply serves to highlight the lack of any real connection between Acrobat and Connect, even though Connect is available “with” Acrobat, even allegedly “integrated” into it.
While I have certainly experienced a number of connection issues (especially with the VOIP), I understand this is not the norm. Regardless of my circumstances, in today’s world, one can’t really expect that all users have big or stable pipes, be optimized for VOIP, or have adequate speakers or microphones for their environment. Laptops suffering wireless interference is increasingly common. Adobe recommends that presenters and viewers shut down their other chat, email and other applications to allow Connect to hog the bandwidth, and further, that you shut down the Presenter’s video uplink as well. At what point wouldn’t you rather make a YouTube movie or email a PowerPoint?
Even with the current generation of the software, a carefully planned meeting using the polling, chat and other features, and POTS (Ma Bell) for audio can work well, even for remote users. Connect has real potential to be a useful conferencing system for experienced users enjoying 1st class connectivity. As presently constituted, new and infrequent users are going to stumble and fall to a degree that will deliver poor impressions when they count the most.
While Connect sessions may be easily recorded by the Presenter, disclosure of this fact should be made clear to the end-user, visually and otherwise. The Presenter should not be encumbered with the responsibility of reminding each and every attendee that “this session is being recorded”, especially if the session is interactive.
At least some who check out the Connect “offering” through Acrobat come away confused and/or a tad miffed. The general opinion seems to be that Adobe doesn’t make it clear that Connect is not actually a new feature of Acrobat, but a new service, with it’s own (again, non-trivial) fee structure.
Lastly, my accessibility creds force me to point out that there’s nothing remotely accessible about Connect - it’s a free-flowing Flash interface, and screen-readers aren’t welcome here. This will, in the long term, have to be addressed if this technology is to have a big future in government.
All that aside, I like Connect - right down to the nervous anticipation that comes from wondering if it will all fall apart midflight, or that I’ll lose the thread, or go blind from squinting at the non-resizable copy in the UI. I just wonder if it’s properly co-located with Acrobat.
