Over at IABC Cafe, Julie Freeman asks about people's experiences with teleconferencing, which reminds me of a recent conversation with a lawyer. He asked me my general opinion of video conferencing and other technologies. I was moved to enthuse about a recent demonstration I'd seen of Cisco's TelePresence. I think that the approach of representing people in high definition at life size is the way of the future for virtual business communication. For now the cost, both for equipment and bandwidth, is beyond most organisations but (other than holography) it's the first setup I have seen that begins to offer an experience that offers some of the affordances* of face-to-face meetings.
However, I ended the conversation by touching on my reservations. The lawyer heads up a branch office and was wondering about the use of technology to reduce travelling to meetings at the central office. That sounds very promising, it could save time, money and help save the planet. Unfortunately, I was of the opinion that for him, it was a bad idea. Why?
The firm is run as a partnership and these meetings at the central office are where the partners gather to decide how the business will be run. My experience is that every such partnership has it's share of low-level politics. And if you move to "virtual meetings" you will amplify any communications gap between the people at central office and those from various branches. That gap no doubt already exists, politically, with those who work in each location tending to discuss matter with each other before the overall gathering takes place. Low-tech teleconferencing however raises the danger that those in central office can have a "back conversation" throughout a virtual meeting, which puts those on the other end of a video link in a position where they have much less awareness of what is going on and thus less ability to influence proceedings.
Is there then no hope for a greener teleconferencing future? I think there is hope, but it relies in understanding that meetings are often not the best forum for discussion or decision-making. If other methods are taken up, they can proceed using "virtualisation technologies" and a smaller number of meetings be made face to face.
*Affordances is a word which means "action possibilities" and I first encountered it in the book "The Myth of the Paperless Office" which I highly recommend if you like thinking about the way various media delimit the way we work and communicate.
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