MMS InMotion

I don’t know about you, but there are some things about the Web—or more specifically, the way many providers of information use their Web sites—that I just don’t get.

Common sense and more studies than you can shake your mouse at have shown us that when we use the Web to find information, we exhibit foraging characteristics. It’s really quite similar to how animals forage for food. Think about it: you don’t care which site has what you’re looking for or when or how it’s found, as long as you get what you need. If our research pays off, then we’ll go back to that “place” later. If it doesn’t pay off, or if a site fools us into thinking we’ll find what we need but we don’t, then we will avoid that “place” in the future. Put another way, the Internet routes around trouble—we can’t make people do what they don’t want to do on the Web.

However, it seems that we forget about our own behaviors when we deploy information on our own Web sites. Often, manufacturing Web sites fall back into familiar habits of long-winded marketing blather or other “un-Web” attributes. Then the companies that build these sites are shocked when they don’t generate acceptable results. It reminds me of kids who won’t listen to good advice.

Take Webinars, for example. These days, most Webinars adhere to schedules (“Be here at 1 p.m. Eastern Time to watch!”); force us to watch an entire 1-hour “death by PowerPoint” presentation (complete with talking head commentary); or force us into other behaviors that are counter to the Web’s intrinsic strengths.

Enter MMS InMotion. Not just a video and audio presentation, InMotion offers access to information provided by today’s industry leaders and technologists in various forms to serve your varied preferences. Video may be watched as an entire piece or in shorter, digestible pieces. Text, scripts, slides and Q&A sessions may be read and/or printed in their entirety or in chunks. In addition, there are no prescribed times to view InMotion presentations; when you need the information, it’s there. There are no demands on users, and the presentations are wide open and accessible via search engines. It’s exactly what the Web was meant to do.

This month, our first InMotion presentation, titled “Solutions For Hard Milling” and provided and produced by Makino, is available for your consumption at www.mmsonline.com/articles/0606im001.html.

Look for future InMotion presentations soon on MMS Online.

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