Businesses Countdown to TechCrunch Disrupt with Help from Skype

We’re counting down to TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco next week. A team of us from Skype’s Silicon Valley office are planning to visit the headliner event. We’re not only excited to check out the sessions, but we’re especially looking forward to the Startup Battlefield event at TechCrunch Disrupt.
As the official video calling host for TechCrunch Disrupt, Skype has been a key tool in the event’s Startup Battlefield competition. According to TechCrunch event organizers, “We’ve performed over 250 video calls and demos for Disrupt on Skype plus countless hours of calls, conference calls and chat sessions.”
That’s great. Not only do we think Skype is an essential tool for almost any business, but we also think it’s really novel that hundreds of startups and entrepreneurs are using Skype to be interviewed by TechCrunch. The final selected contestants will have their chance to pitch their ideas or products in person at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference, for a cash prize of $50,000 that can be used to help them bring their idea to the market.
Millions of people use Skype every day, and in the first half of 2010, Skype video calling represented approximately 40% of all Skype-to-Skype minutes. In fact, approximately 37% of over 40,000 of our connected users surveyed in the first quarter of 2010 told us they use Skype occasionally or often for business related purposes. Businesses are using Skype to benefit from lower costs and expand how employees, customers, partners and suppliers communicate and collaborate with ease-of-use, greater convenience and efficiency.

Check out these tips to get started using Skype for your business today.

• If you can’t arrange an in-person meeting, suggest hosting the meeting over a Skype video call. Ensure you have a high quality webcam and microphone, high-speed Internet access, and Skype software downloaded to your computer.
• If there are more than two parties on the call, Skype’s latest beta for Windows can support group video calling, so you can talk to multiple colleagues or customers.
• If you want an easy way to manage and allocate credit for multiple Skype accounts for your organization, use Skype Manager.
• Don’t forget if you want to show a demo or run through a presentation, Skype’s screen sharing feature is easy and useful. In fact, check out this great TechCrunch post here about Skype screen sharing.
• Last but not least, a little bit of etiquette can go a long way when communicating with business associates over Skype. We enjoyed these great etiquette tips from TechCrunch here.