The technology is here now and it's been here for a while, but how do we embrace it?

Maybe we need to adapt to it or maybe the technologies interface needs to be more human?

Yes we can save time and money but can we still keep our relations the same?

www.ppadesign.com

Video conferencing: at last a good alternative to travel?

Video conferencing has been around for a surprisingly long time. AT&T ran the first call in 1927. Since then, pundits have been consistently predicting that video conferencing was just about to take off. They have been wrong for eighty years. Why should we believe the techno-optimists now?

In the last year, several companies have launched video conferencing products that provide an experience similar to real meetings. The quality is surprising and even sceptics have begun to see the advantages of using a meeting room for an hour rather than spending three days going to Hong Kong and back. Cisco’s Telepresence product is generating enthusiasm that is tempered by the enormous costs of setting up the equipment and providing the bandwidth. But the company says that prices will fall dramatically over the next few years.

Is this going to be enough to get people out of planes? The signs are good. Even low bandwidth alternatives suitable for home use are getting praise from the experts. So if Cisco doesn’t make video conferencing work, Bay Area start-ups like VSee will probably start eating into the market for lower cost products.

***

Video conferencing: why we need it to work
UK companies are increasingly promising ‘carbon neutrality’ to their stakeholders. Electricity consumption can be neutralised by the purchase of energy from renewable sources. Gas is more difficult to counter-balance, but is a small element in most firms’ carbon emissions.

Carbon produced by travel is an increasingly important part of the budget of most large companies. Amongst the very largest companies, business flights dominate the total emissions from employee travel. And as air travel is perceived to get more time-consuming, stressful and unproductive, some companies are beginning to investigate much more extensive use of video conferencing. Other than investing in dubious ‘offsetting’ projects, video conferencing may be the most plausible way of beginning to hold down the apparently inexorable rise in air travel.

The previous generation of video conferencing products are widely regarded as wholly unsuitable replacements for meetings. The experience seems to be that only groups well know to each other with similar professional backgrounds can work around the deficiencies in older conferencing products. The new generation of video conferencing, universally called ‘telepresence’, is clearly a huge advance on the old systems. First reports from companies that have installed the expensive technology are extremely favourable. The computing press reports a Wachovia bank executive saying that telepresence suites were already in use 45% of the time within two months of installation. The previous kit had never got above 20%. Tate and Lyle is quoted as saying that the new service makes good financial sense because the typical trip between the UK and US headquarters costs $25,000 and three days of senior executive time.

Video conferencing still has a long way to go. I have only found two large UK companies that report their hours of video conferencing use: Pearson and Reed Elsevier. Both companies are diversified publishing companies with widely dispersed operations and very high levels of air travel per employee. Pearson employees travel an average of 4,000 miles a year by air, down slightly last year but still rising at approximately 1% a year over a longer period. Air travel represents over two thirds of all business travel. The company used its video conferencing suites for a total of 9,000 hours last year, up significantly in 2006, but still a tiny fraction of the time spent travelling by air. The average employee spend less than 20 minutes in video conferencing last year. The time taken to travel the average 4,000 miles by air was probably the best part of a working week.

The air travel of Reed employees was up 5% last year, and accounted for 45,000 tonnes of emissions or about a tonne and a half per employee. Its advanced ‘collaboration’ suites saved about 323 tonnes, or less than 1% of the air travel figure.

We are not going to stop the need for international collaboration. The general quality of these collaborations is widely thought to be poor, largely because people don’t spend enough time together. The impulse to travel more and more will remain unless we can really get video conferencing to work.

The problems with video conferencing
One source describes working with another person over a video conferencing link as being similar to collaborating with a ‘mentally defective foreigner’. What goes wrong?

Audio needs to be synched with video. But sound is easier to process and tends to arrive first. If the voice reaches the listener too early, the speaker tends to be perceived as untrustworthy and glib. If an adjustment is made to correct this and the video arrives first, the remote person is seen as stupid and slow-witted.
Social protocols demand that people look at each other directly. A conferencing system that gives the user an impression that his or her interlocutor is looking more than 3 degrees away from the eyes will make the user uncomfortable, and give an impression of disrespect.
Successful oral communication demands rapid and seamless switching between people in the conversation. Bad videoconferencing makes this more difficult than in an audio call.
Most clues to the speaker that he or she is boring the audience, confusing them or patronising them are non-verbal. For example, few people actually say that a conversation bores them; they give subtle and not so subtle clues to their conversation partner. Video conferencing prompts the bored person to offer these clues, but they are not received by the other person. The speaker does not adjust his or her communication style. Irritation ensues.
Similarly, people implicitly expect video conferencing technologies to make their speech persuasive (which is one of the reasons why one wants to speak face-to-face). It does not and everybody finds the interchange unsatisfactory.

In summary, bad video is worse than no video. The availability of a picture sets up an expectation that normal free-flowing conversation is going to take place. So both parties behave as if they were in a conventional face-to-face meeting, in which verbal and non-verbal clues are being unconsciously processed. A phone conversation would have been better because we would have adjusted to the well-understood restrictions on our communications ability.

from website: http://www.carboncommentary.com/2007/10/29/38

www.ppadesign.com

In Schools & Universities?
Videoconference Classrooms
Video Conferencing Classrooms offer instructors the ability to teach classes to one or more remote sites using current classroom technology. Classes can be taught to any of the TWU campuses as well as many off-campus sites through the use of IP Technology.
State of the art videoconference classroom