Patent ID: 8161113

Claim:
In a network computing environment, a method of managing a web based conference, the web based conference including one or more presenter computing systems connected through a network to a plurality of attendee computing systems, wherein the presenter computing systems control data sent to the attendee computing systems, the method comprising: receiving user input at a presenter computing system from a presenter, during a web based conference, indicating that a slide flip message should be sent to a plurality of attendee computing systems, the message instructing each of the plurality of attendee computing systems to flip a slide in a presentation being used in the web based conference; in response to receiving the user input at the presenter computing system, sending the slide flip message to each of the plurality of attendee computing systems, wherein the slide flip message is sent via a first attendee server that connects the presenter computing system to each of the plurality of attendee computing systems; receiving an acknowledgment from each of at least a portion of the plurality of attendee computing systems indicating that each of the at least a portion of the plurality of attendee computing systems has flipped the slide in the presentation; based on the number of acknowledgements received, generating a metric that represents the number of attendee computing systems that flipped the slide in the presentation; displaying the metric to the presenter on the presenter computing system; after at least one additional attendee computing system has been joined the web based conference in response to the number of attendee computing systems participating in the web based conference exceeding a specified threshold, receiving second user input at the presenter computing system from the presenter, during the web based conference, indicating that another slide flip message should be sent to the plurality of attendee computing systems as well as the at least one additional attendee computing systems; and in response to receiving the second user input at the presenter computing system, sending the slide flip message to the plurality of attendee computing systems via the first attendee server, and to the at least one additional attendee computing system via a second attendee server that was added to route messages of the web based conference from the presenter computing system to each of the at least one additional attendee computing system.