Wired News This Is Your Business, Virtually

"Few companies have made a common practice of holding meetings in what analysts call a "virtual room" because the technology is still prohibitively expensive, said Christine Perey, president of Perey Research & Consulting. What's more, not everyone feels comfortable speaking in front of a camera. But as the technology improves and costs continue to drop, Perey said she could see virtual rooms becoming mainstream "in 20 years.""

"By then, the generation that grew up with a video camera stuck in its face by doting parents won't think twice about being recorded for business presentations, she said."

InternetNews.Com Microsoft to Acquire PlaceWare

""We look at this as a long-term thing," Microsoft Information Worker Group lead program manager Dan Leach told internetnews.com. "We make big bets and long term bets... and this is one of them. I wouldn't be surprised if Web conferencing becomes even more commonplace in the next five years.""

redux [05.14.02]
SiliconValley.Com Teleconferencing, videoconferencing settle back to normal levels

"Videoconferencing peaked in the two months after Sept. 11 as all travel -- especially airline travel -- was curtailed, said AT&T spokeswoman Jean Hurt. "Now it has settled back to normal growth trajectory," she said."

""Usage remained high until around Dec. 18, and then it crashed and burned,"' Gold said."

redux [03.07.02]
SFGate Simple economics has driven many away from air travel

"Analyst Phil Leigh said that after Sept. 11, business users are more inclined to try Web conferencing technology than face the added ordeals of a business trip.

"It's still a new thing and it's still not as easy as picking up the telephone," said Leigh, vice president of technology research at Raymond James & Associates.

"Some resistance to change is endemic to all of us," Leigh said. "You can't shake hands across the Web. But in terms of personal productivity, I can do more with WebEx -- I can reach out to more people in the same fixed amount of time.""

redux [10.29.01]
The New York Times Companies Move Away From Centralized Offices
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""Corporate America is developing a different strategy of place," said Charles Grantham, chief scientist of the Institute for the Study of Distributed Work. "The bottom line is a hard-core business logic -- you're better positioned for business continuity if you're distributed. But Sept. 11 also crystallized for a lot of people that they want a better balance between their personal and professional life, and managers are going to have to confront that in the coming year."

Such revolutionary zeal may be premature. After all, the longstanding conviction that a centralized workplace is essential to enforcing corporate culture, loyalty and hard work has been behind big real estate investments in corporate campuses and towering headquarters buildings. Those expenditures can make it prohibitively expensive to switch to a distributed workplace."

redux [09.20.01]
LATimes Firms Turn to Meetings Without the Traveling

"The economy and corporate budgets are in sharp decline, new safety checks have made moving through airports slower than ever, and there's a general reluctance to travel in the wake of last week's terrorist attacks.

If corporate America is to attempt some semblance of normality, there must be meetings with customers, suppliers, far-flung co-workers, bankers, lawyers and distributors.

To keep things going, many companies are turning to videoconferencing, the technology touted years ago as the movement that would end corporate travel. It never did and it never will. But videoconferencing is on the rise, and experts said last week's events will further accelerate its use."

redux [07.11.01]
MIT Technology Review Work the Problem, People

"While researchers tap Internet2 to extend collaboration between universities and push the limits of new Internet technologies, another group of social scientists is looking at how Internet2 is affecting those who use it - in effect, researching the researchers."

"Still, human beings clearly prefer working face to face. Teasley says that although scientists at each CFAR site can meet and examine data from their own PCs, they still tend to cluster around a single computer. "Their biggest complaint was that it was too hard to see that small screen," says Teasley. "I told them they should buy a projector. That was my high-level PhD advice.""

Alertbox Beyond Being There

"Beyond Being There was a research project at Bell Communications Research in 1991 and 1992. Its key insight was that computer and communications technology cannot in the foreseeable future achieve the same quality of human interaction as that afforded by PPR (physically proximate reality - our somewhat obscure term for meeting in person). Thus, while most other projects aimed at every-higher communication bandwidths and higher-fidelity video, we aimed at making computers help people communicate in ways that cannot be done in PPR (for example, anonymous interactions). In other words, we wanted to be better than reality and move beyond being there!"

Scott Klemmer scott's thoughts on: Beyond Being There

"Hollan and Stornetta effectively argue that the pursuit of face-to-face is a) often inappropriate, and b) destined to fail. The premise behind this assumption is that a media attempting to imitate face-to-face fails when communities only use that media when f-to-f is not available. When this happens, electronic communication is at a disadvantage relative to f-to-f. They argue that "In telecommunications research perhaps we have been building crutches rather than shoes;" we only use the crutch when our fully functional leg is not available. The authors suggest that researchers should instead begin building shoes, which augment our legs, and we use them even when they are fully functional. They astutely argue that there are potential advantages to electronic communication that are not present in f-to-f. "For example, three significant features of the new medium are its ability to support asynchronous communication, anonymous communication, and to automatically archive communication.""