Vincent Monico considers himself a born teacher — he finds being in the classroom exciting. "You're performing on a stage; you're interacting with the audience," said Monico, a computer training specialist at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

He prefers face-to-face training sessions, but necessity has forced him to explore an online alternative. "We do a lot of training remotely because we don't have the money to travel," he said.

When Monico learned that even money for remote training was difficult to obtain, he improvised. He adapted free software that Microsoft ships with every copy of Windows 98 and Windows XP and used it to provide database training for EEOC's employees at field offices nationwide.

"We took something we already had on the computer, Microsoft's NetMeeting," he said. "It's meeting software, but we use it to do training."

Two years ago, Monico had his first opportunity to test the feasibility of using NetMeeting for remote training. After 20 years, EEOC was switching to a new database application for tracking discrimination cases.

Through trial and error, Monico adapted NetMeeting for training 1,600 people in EEOC's field offices to use the new case-tracking database, called the Integrated Mission System (IMS). Initially, he held weeklong remote training sessions in a few offices at a time. "Then we realized we could do a lot more," he said.

At one point, he and his colleagues were using NetMeeting to train 90 people at once. But there were challenges, he said. Because NetMeeting was not designed for more than about 15 simultaneous users, EEOC's information technology specialists had to devise an elaborate configuration that used a half-dozen laptop computers and desktop PCs as servers.

The system grew a bit too complicated, Monico said, so he began simplifying. He used telephone conference calls instead of NetMeeting's voice-activation features. He also disabled the video portion of NetMeeting but not its ability to display views of the IMS application.

Beyond adapting the technology, Monico also had to accommodate the needs of employees with hearing problems and other disabilities. "We're EEOC — we try to accommodate everybody," he said.