A company in Milton-under-Wychwood is proving that high-tech can be green-tech. First Sight Media provides interactive “webinars” for academics and professional organisations — saving them all the trouble and expense of having to travel the world to attend conferences.

The firm can bring high-profile events and debates to thousands, live online.Take for instance the now famous debate, held at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, in February, between atheist professor and author Richard Dawkins and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

There was certainly not an empty seat in the house — and, in addition, there were 250,000 individual Internet connections made by viewers worldwide — thanks to the skills, built up over decades, of the firm’s managing director Paul Hooper, his business partner Richard Belcher and their team of six experts plus a host of freelances Mr Hooper said: “That was the biggest event we have ever videoed and streamed live. We used multiple cameras and produced sharp, high quality images.”

If only such a thing as the internet had existed 152 years ago when scientist Julian Huxley, in the evolutionist corner, and Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford in the creationist camp, debated theory at the University Museum in Parks Road.

Not least we would now have a proper record of what really occurred. For instance, we would know exactly what Huxley said during a certain overheated exchange in which — some assert and others deny — that he told the bishop: “I would rather be descended from an ape than from a bigoted prelate like you.”

But whatever the truth about past, unrecorded conferences, Mr Hooper is sure about the future.

He said: “There can be no doubt that making use of the internet to enlarge audiences of traditional events, globally, is the way forward.”

Now the company has been engaged to video the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh when they attend a Diamond Jubilee celebration in words and music at Worcester Cathedral in July.

Mr Hooper said: “The last 12 months have been incredible for us, with unprecedented growth in web-based production. To film the Royal couple at such a special time is indeed an honour.”

It all seems a world away from when First Sight Media started up in London in 1993. Then few people, if any, saw how the Internet would in the next couple of decades transform our lives.

Mr Hooper said: “First Sight Media was originally a video production company producing promotional videos but we soon moved into digital communications.”

Bread and butter work back in those days was recording graduation ceremonies on video — and even today graduations are still an important part of the firm’s work — it annually films and webcasts such events at Oxford Brookes.

But Mr Hooper says the key to the company’s growth — and it now has a £375,000 annual turnover — is simply “talking to clients and listening to what they say.”

In other words Continuing Professional Development (CPD), — a concept embodied in many companies’ training programmes for employees and fast becoming a fruitful source of revenue in itself for First Sight Media. It can even produce an online certificate of attendance for e-delegates to CPD conferences.

In a bid to capitalise on interactive webinars the firm has now developed iPresenter, its own interactive portal to deliver presentations across the web and featuring synchronised video and slides and advanced thumbnail slides.

The portal has been used to stage webcasts by numerous professional and academic organisations. Its great advantage is that it enables e-delegates to an event or presentation, who notoriously have a shorter attention span than those at a live event, to view both the presenter and slides simultaneously and on the same screen, side by side.

This allows the viewer to choose which part of the presentation to focus on — just as they would if they were sitting in the room in which the presentation was being made.

Some might even argue that these days there are actual advantages to attending a conference online.

For example, a viewer can be constantly updated with what has been said so far and can take part in an interactive question and answer session with others, even while the discussion on screen is ongoing.

And as a sales technique to reach specialised markets, say pharmaceutical, specialised software, or veterinary, it works well. It is even becoming the norm for many companies.

Mr Hooper said: “In one day recently we live streamed three interactive sessions, for the same client, launching new software globally. In the morning we went to Asia, at lunch time to Europe and North America in the afternoon.

“The boost to introduce the product and produce sales was excellent.”

Originally iPresenter was developed with online education in mind, but the company soon discovered the potential of webcasting and developed the program in tandem with computer literate customers.

Now it has also developed a program called Immersis which allows even closer tailoring of a presentation or event to make sure exactly the right message gets across.

So if you are not yet using the net to the full in order to get your message out to customers, academic colleagues, employees or anyone else — welcome to the new world.