Patent ID: 8028073

Claim:
A method for coordinating remote participation of a client device in a meeting within a network comprising the client device and one or more nodes, the meeting involving a multimedia presentation including presentation of one or more slides, the method comprising: receiving an invitation for the client device to participate in the meeting, wherein a user will participate in the meeting using the client device; receiving information indicating acceptance of the invitation by the user; storing temporal information about the meeting; determining whether to send a notification to the user of the meeting based on the stored temporal information and other information including the information indicating acceptance of the invitation by the user; in the event that the user should be notified, determining when to notify the user of the meeting based on the stored temporal information; and sending one or more messages about the meeting, the one or more messages causing the client device to connect to at least one of the one or more nodes and participate in the meeting with the at least one of the one or more nodes, determining when slides for the presentation have been changed; and in response to determining when a slide has been changed: determining a current slide in the one or more slides being displayed, and sending a message, to the client device, without a multimedia communication session connection with the client device, the message indicating that the current slide has been displayed, wherein the message enables the current slide to be displayed on the client device.