Online Conferencing – Changing the way we meet at work

This is a report about a study by Diptarup Chakraborti who is the principal research analyst for Gartner. He has over 12 years of experience in marketing, advertising and marketing intelligence, of which the last 8 years have been within the IT industry.

Its 10 am on a Tuesday and you are just in time to get into a very critical meeting. You switch on your laptop, load your presentation and ask your maid servant at home to make you a nice cup of tea. And wait for other members of the meeting to join in. Yes, you did read it correctly. You are taking the meeting in the comfort of your home. Surprised? Welcome to the age of Remote Conferencing.

With the advancement of communication technologies, such a scenario is no longer a part of a science fiction movie but is a reality. The other members of the team can dial in from different parts of the globe and you can do so likewise over what is known as a teleconference. One can be a part of an audio conference with little or no loss of the message over phone lines. What’s more? Today, there are video conferencing tools which allow organisations to have face to face interactions where the visuals are transmitted through a TV screen.

Trends in Remote Conferencing

If you thought what has been described above is the latest available in the market. Think again. Whatever you thought was impossible just a couple of years earlier is not only being made possible but also being adopted aggressively by organisations across the country. Enterprises are now experiencing a technology called telepresence which provides the user with such comprehensive and convincing stimuli that the he hardly perceives any differences from actual presence. The quality of interaction is not much different from an actual face to face interaction.

Internet communication technologies like Windows live Meeting, Net meeting etc allows the presenter to share files across the internet and the presentation can be made through a system called webinar. Webinars allows the user and audience to connect with each other over the web and hence there is no need to travel to a conference for the same. Webinars are increasingly being used to communicate minor but significant events to its core audience. It saves the organisation huge expenses which it would otherwise incur to have it staged offline and the audience the hassle of traveling to the venue. The quality of the delivery of the presentation is not much different either. 

Remote conferencing is also replacing face to face meetings within organisations, especially when the members are in different geographical locations. Project management teams in engineering, advertising, IT etc are using some of them, especially the web based ones to seamlessly work on projects and improve the quality and frequency of their interactions. Incidentally, The Bee Movie was created and designed in New Zealand with the star of the show, Jerry Sienfeld sitting in New York, all done over remote conferencing tools, the star and the designer hardly having met more than a few times.

Advantages of Remote Conferencing

It is estimated that the IT industry globally contributes nearly 2 per cent of all carbon emissions in the world. A large part of it must be in extensive traveling that their managers do for business. Even if 20 per cent of it is reduced by using the remote meetings, imagine the resultant cost savings. Besides this, it also leads to earning carbon credits for the organisation which is nothing short of cash.

So just like our TV remote changed the way we watched television, allowing us the choice of multiple channels (imagine going up to your TV every time you wanted to switch channels), remote conferencing will in time too bring about a sea change in the way we meet at work.

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William S. Dickinson is a marketing professional who works for Momentum Conferencing with offices in Vancouver BC and Toronto, ON. You can find Momentum Conferencing on the web @ www.momentumconferencing.com.