Emerging Technologies Consulting

My friend and colleague, Nancy White, wrote yesterday about shrinking travel budgets and virtual meetings.  She notes that many meetings and conferences are seeing a reduction in registrations and one conference is offering virtual presentations as an option for those who might want their work to be seen, but can’t afford to travel to the actual conference.  I’ve really appreciated conferences, too, that post videos or audio of presentations after the conference.  Even if I’ve attended a conference, I can’t get to everything and I appreciate being about to see or hear other presentations.

Nancy points out that she’s used Skype and other virtual meeting tools, but not all of them are successful at creating the kind of intimate space necessary for good meetings.  I must say that I find Second Life better than other virtual meeting tools.  There something about seeing the representation of the person that really adds to the experience.  I’ve been in meetings where we see people’s faces and that comes close, but Second Life avatars somehow add an element of fun and spontaneity that most face-to-face meetings have.  Now, it takes some getting used to being in Second Life, but if you’re just doing the basics, it’s not that hard and Second Life has voice and tools that can allow you to show work, etc.

I think face-to-face meetings, especially conferences, are never going away.  People are social by nature and they like hanging out with each other.  The good stuff that happens and meetings is usually between sessions in the hallways and over lunch and drinks, where the content gets discussed and critiqued.  I can imagine, though, more regionally based meetings.  What if, instead of having a national meeting in California, which means more travel costs for east coasters, you had simultaneous regional meetings.  Maybe the keynote comes from wherever the speaker is closest and gets beamed into each regional meeting.  Other sessions take place live in the various regions. At the end of the multiple conferences, there might be a wrap-up session via video conferencing that allows the group as a whole to share key themes and concepts that arose during the meeting. I realize that each region is going to need space, but one could imagine that less space might be needed.  Space could be rented from lower cost sources such as universities rather than from giant hotels.  Attendance might increase as people are able to drive or take a train rather than fly in order to attend, which would cover the potential increase in space cost.

In any one-to-many situation, it doesn’t make sense necessarily to bring everyone to a physical space to hear someone speak.  And many conferences follow this pattern,  a single person or panel presents something and an audience listens.  There’s really no need for the audience to be physically in the space.  When the purpose of the meeting is simply to convey information in this way, then perhaps video-conferencing might work.  It’s figuring out how to keep the informal conversations going in virtual spaces that’s the hard part.  It seems to require much more effort than in face-to-face situations.  Until we really figure that out, or get as comfortable with virtual spaces for informal work as we are with physical spaces, we’re still going to spend the money and the energy going to conferences.  As Nancy says,

We need to make gathering time serve our purposes and to be useful, functional and ENJOYABLE. Not a torture test. Friends and colleagues in my circle have all acknowledged we need to start thinking, working and practicing together to both better understand and manipulate the [virtual meeting] tools and improve the meeting processes themselves.

Right now, some of the virtual tools are a torture test.  But I would argue that air travel is increasingly that way as well.  So, I think we do need to really consider why we’re going somewhere, whether it’s really worth it, and if there are opportunities for participating virtually that would capture the essence of the meeting.

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