I've just booked a four-day trip to Indianapolis to participate in a client problem-solving meeting. There are just four of us participating, two from the UK, to from the USA. The meeting lasts just two days, so the remaining two days are largely wasted in travelling. I'm not that bothered about going to my grave without having seen Indianapolis (no offence, any residents who are reading this), so the travel is no real incentive. So, why are we meeting face-to-face when we could be online? That's what I'm trying to figure out.
I can't imagine a two-day teleconference, using land lines or Skype, because we need a visual space in which we can throw ideas around. Of course we could use a web conferencing system, with a virtual whiteboard, document sharing and all those nice things, but I have no experience of sustaining this sort of event for more than an hour or so. The lack of free and natural conversation, with body language cues and eye contact would, I believe, ultimately prove too much of an obstacle. And then there's the increased value that participants seem to place on face-to-face events - they're more likely to turn up and they're less likely to try and multitask.
So, I was interested to read in The Economist this week - see 'Far away yet strangely personal' - about attempts by Cisco and Hewlett Packard to provide a more appealing alternative to what it calls the 'despised business of videoconferencing'. This souped up, high bandwidth and more version, labelled 'telepresence' has been designed to overcome many of the barriers that get in the way of meeting at a distance. According to the article: "Users still communicate via live audio and video feeds, but the speed and quality of transmission have increased, and the screens have grown and multiplied, in order to create the illusion that the two parties to a conversation are not continents apart but at opposite ends of the same table (as in the picture above). The aim, telepresence's boosters say, is to get participants in such meetings to forget, or at least stop caring, that they are not in the same room."
Telepresence is not for everyone. HP, for example, charges $350,000 for every room it kits out and, in America, a further $18,000 a month for service. Having said that, Cisco says it has persuaded 52 firms to sign up, for an average of five rooms each. Of course there are big cost savings to be made and environmental benefits too: according to HP, eliminating one round-trip journey between New York and London saves 3,000lb (1,361kg) of carbon dioxide—roughly as much as 90 cars emit in a day.
I may never get to take part in a telepresence meeting - after all, it's not designed for home workers (except those with a spare $350K) - but it does look like a step forward for those working for big multinationals. Of course giant leaps in bandwidth may ultimately make this a mass market technology, but I wouldn't hold your breath.
Anyway, this has left me wondering. Even with telepresence, would I still have booked that trip to Indianapolis? Mmm.
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