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Raindance

Company: Raindance
Company Description: Founded in April of 1997, Raindance's mission is to bring an entirely new level of simplicity and interaction to web meetings and events. By designing a range of conferencing solutions, Raindance enables people to communicate freely and naturally. Today, thousands of corporate customers entrust their web meetings to Raindance's web conferencing technology.
Nomination Category: Company, Office & Product Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best New Product or Service

Nomination Title: Raindance Seminar Edition

   1. Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 500 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and sales to date. You may include hyperlinks to product photos and data sheets. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

Raindance Communications, Inc announced the availability of Raindance Seminar Edition in June 2005.  As the leader in integrated multimedia conferencing services and support, Raindance understands that coordinating the logistics of an event can be one of the most stressful and complicated parts of any job. Web conferencing has dramatically diminished the need for travel, by bringing the in-person meeting to any desired location, including airports, hotel rooms, and other offices.  The Seminar Edition was introduced as an innovative, large scale meeting tool that is both feature rich and easy to use by any event planner.  This video-enabled web conferencing service lets you easily plan and conduct engaging 'webinars' from start to finish for virtually any size audience. From scheduling to the delivery of content to detailed post-event reports, Raindance Seminar Edition offers comprehensive and easy-to-use tools that allow you to focus on your message and your audience.

Key Features include:• Unique event creation wizard, which walks users step-by-step through the scheduling process • Access to detailed information about potential attendees by requiring registration; post events to a public calendar for easy access; increase attendance through meeting invitations that allow invitees to save the information to their Outlook calendars• OpenGo™ audio conferencing automatically calls the moderator, co-presenters and all seminar participants when the conference begins• High-resolution visuals capability that dynamically resizes based on each viewer's screen, allowing on-the-fly editing or share control of a document• A host of tools available to interact and engage participants on a formal or informal basis such as: Polling, Q&A, private or public text chat at the moderator's discretion, and the sharing of documents and applications by the audience• Post event access to reports of all the activity that took place before and during the event

Fourth-quarter revenue of $18.8 million represents a 4% increase over both the previous quarter and the fourth quarter of last year.  Contributing to this growth are a strong suite of services, including the Raindance Seminar Edition.

For further details regarding the Raindance Seminar Edition visit: http://raindance.com/rndc/services/rseOverview.jsp

   2. List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, product reviews, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

Press Release http://raindance.com/rndc/aboutUs/pressReleasesSelection.jsp?
content=/aboutUs/content/releases/pressRelease050620.jsp

PC Magazine product review
http://raindance.com/rndc/library/pcMagazine_review092005.pdf

Network Computing
http://www.networkcomputing.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=172301960

Patricia Seybold Group
http://www.psgroup.com/detail.aspx?ID=688

Conferencing News.com
http://www.conferencingnews.com/feature/26

   3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the team that developed this nominated product or service:

Don Detampel is the CEO with over two decades of senior executive experience within Internet infrastructure, telecommunications and web technology companies. Detampel joined Raindance as CEO in January of 2004 and was previously on Raindance's board of directors.

Todd Vernon, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Raindance is responsible for the design, development and operations of Raindance's web and phone-based conferencing services, technologies and network. He has more than 15 years of experience designing, developing and managing complex real-time software systems in a variety of sectors.