denverpilot
Tied Down
Attended an ASF Webinar this evening. Worked well, except that...
It is hosted by GoToWebinar (same folks as GoToMeeting, Citrix).
Couple of problems with the GoToWebinar system...
- The iPhone/iPad application does not support the quizzes/voting during the seminars. The screen shows up, but you can't click on any answers.
- Once you join with the iPhone/iPad application, GoToWebinar locks you out from joining via any other means. It says, "Someone else has already joined under this e-mail address" and takes you to the Registration page, even if you exited the iPhone/iPad App via "Leave Meeting" properly.
- You can't submit text questions via the iPhone/iPad App.
Another bug:
- After leaving and rejoining the Webinar from iPhone/iPad, the phrase "Loading Bruce Landsberg's screen..." came up and the screen never reloaded. All that was working was audio.
In general, my experience with this Webinar was iffy, but it wasn't ASF/AOPA's issue. It was the vendor's problems created by releasing Apps for a platform far in advance of the App actually supporting all of their own features. In addition, their system doesn't handle log-offs correctly so you can re-join from a different desktop platform.
I was listening through the iPhone App, and couldn't switch to the "full experience". I re-registered for the seminar with a new e-mail address I have control over, and eventually got a link to join under that address.
If the vendor's software had handled the "Leave Meeting" button correctly on the iPhone/iPad application, it wouldn't be a problem... so I don't hold any of this against ASF. But those are 100% reproducible bugs/design errors on Citrix's part, and can be fixed.
I sent feedback to AOPA/ASF via their e-mail for such, so they can a) get a refund for my "two" participants in the webinar, since I'm sure Citrix charges by the participant, and b) they can communicate these bugs to Citrix and get a recommendation on whether or not Citrix will either be fixing the App soon, or if they can block iPhone/iPad users, or at least warn them that certain features won't work properly during the meeting and handle the logout correctly so the user can switch to a more supported platform.
As far as the webinar content itself goes, the Webinar, "Flying Safely with Cockpit Weather" was a good primer on datalink radar and it's limitations, but couldn't go very deep into the topic in the short time frame of the webinar. About half of the material covered was information anyone looking at a ground-based radar display should already know.
It is hosted by GoToWebinar (same folks as GoToMeeting, Citrix).
Couple of problems with the GoToWebinar system...
- The iPhone/iPad application does not support the quizzes/voting during the seminars. The screen shows up, but you can't click on any answers.
- Once you join with the iPhone/iPad application, GoToWebinar locks you out from joining via any other means. It says, "Someone else has already joined under this e-mail address" and takes you to the Registration page, even if you exited the iPhone/iPad App via "Leave Meeting" properly.
- You can't submit text questions via the iPhone/iPad App.
Another bug:
- After leaving and rejoining the Webinar from iPhone/iPad, the phrase "Loading Bruce Landsberg's screen..." came up and the screen never reloaded. All that was working was audio.
In general, my experience with this Webinar was iffy, but it wasn't ASF/AOPA's issue. It was the vendor's problems created by releasing Apps for a platform far in advance of the App actually supporting all of their own features. In addition, their system doesn't handle log-offs correctly so you can re-join from a different desktop platform.
I was listening through the iPhone App, and couldn't switch to the "full experience". I re-registered for the seminar with a new e-mail address I have control over, and eventually got a link to join under that address.
If the vendor's software had handled the "Leave Meeting" button correctly on the iPhone/iPad application, it wouldn't be a problem... so I don't hold any of this against ASF. But those are 100% reproducible bugs/design errors on Citrix's part, and can be fixed.
I sent feedback to AOPA/ASF via their e-mail for such, so they can a) get a refund for my "two" participants in the webinar, since I'm sure Citrix charges by the participant, and b) they can communicate these bugs to Citrix and get a recommendation on whether or not Citrix will either be fixing the App soon, or if they can block iPhone/iPad users, or at least warn them that certain features won't work properly during the meeting and handle the logout correctly so the user can switch to a more supported platform.
As far as the webinar content itself goes, the Webinar, "Flying Safely with Cockpit Weather" was a good primer on datalink radar and it's limitations, but couldn't go very deep into the topic in the short time frame of the webinar. About half of the material covered was information anyone looking at a ground-based radar display should already know.