Looks like a good time for me to step in and comment...
Thanks for the feedback - just as Glenn and Mark have suggested, I do indeed welcome it.
A couple of comments on how my team is set up, which may help understand this situation.
My team (DevTech) is made up of roughly 30 engineers, covering all Autodesk's platforms - whether serving General Design, AEC, Manufacturing, Geospatial or Media & Entertainment industries - and spread around the globe. We maintain a strongly distributed organisation mainly to provide local services - API evangelism, training & mentoring - while team members also take part in more "global" activities (such as API support, delivery of webcasts and creation of DevTV content). We believe that everyone in the team should take part in both sets of activities, as they help people grow both sets of skills needed to be a strong DevTech Engineer ("soft" skills, such as presentation and communication skills, and "hard" skills, such as deep technical know-how).
So our skills are spread across products and around the world, and while we have a number of "native" English speakers, we also have a number of people who have learned English later in life (or live in a place where - even if English is their first language - it is spoken with "an accent"). My belief is that everyone in my team should be involved in our various activities - assuming their English skills meet a baseline requirement -
and over time individuals will improve their capacity to be understood internationally, as they engage more and receive more feedback on how to improve.
One option would be for us to only have our British and American employees deliver training, but that's not one I'm keen on (diversity of roles is also good for my team, whether to help build skills or to keep them from the monotony of providing support - or of providing training - all day, every day). We also have a global customer-base, and while we mostly use English as our language of communication, people around the world do speak English in different ways.
That said, I'm very interested in looking for ways to help people overcome situations where they have difficulty understanding a particular presenter (whether it's someone from the UK understanding a presenter from India or someone from China understanding a presenter from the US). Recordings do help - as you've mentioned - although it's also been noted correctly that the quality of the recording provided automatically by LiveMeeting could be better. One other idea would be to provide transcripts of the presentation along with the demo material, so people can read sections of text they've had trouble with. I haven't checked on what would be involved, but I believe most of our presenters generate scripts to help with their preparation/delivery.
If you have other suggestions, please do let me know (I'm not a regular visitor here, I'm afraid, so the best would be if you could drop me an email at kean.walmsley@autodesk.com).
Thanks & regards,
Kean
