Schofield Media Group Chicago- Conferencing Trends

For years, the telecom giants have been promising a future when business meetings can be conducted without anyone ever leaving their home offices. The commercials should be familiar to anyone - a man in a San Francisco office makes a presentation to a boardroom filled with Japanese executives, or schoolchildren in Paris and Chicago receive the same lesson from the same teacher simultaneously.

It looks like that future is actually here at last, according to experts in the conferencing technology industry. The advent of high-definition displays and streamlined interfaces have made video conferencing more immersive and easier to use. Recent advances in mobile phones have made it possible to join an audio or Web conference on the go. Lower costs enable a company to scale conferencing technology to fit its specific needs. Even though experts agree that a firm handshake and face-to-face contact is always the best way to start a business relationship, conferencing really is becoming the next best thing to being there.

Almost the Real Thing
“The interesting thing to me is that … what we're finding is that since the stuff actually works now, a lot of the applications people were dreaming about before are coming true,” says John Doyle, CEO of LifeSize, a videoconferencing equipment supplier. He says many of the company's customers are beginning to cut back on travel thanks to the quality of new high-definition technology.

“I would say that the quality of the video is high enough so that you're seeing minute facial expressions,” Doyle continues. “You can read lips. I can read other people's e-mail on the other end, on their monitor. It's as though you're sitting with the person.”

Today's technology makes it possible for those participating in video conferencing not only to have their voice be heard and their face seen, but to have “telepresence,” Doyle explains. “We define telepresence for our customers as authenticity of experience, so that means you're getting eye contact and very high resolution of images. [It's] light-years beyond a normal standard definition's herky-jerky interface.”

One of LifeSize's customers is a casting agency in New York, which used to have to fly actors out from Los Angeles for interviews. “What they found is that the quality of our systems is so high that they can interview them through the system,” Doyle says. Another customer is the Birmingham Cancer Network in the U.K., and Doyle says doctors there are now able to remotely diagnose some patients.

At the high end of the new wave of high-def video conferencing are simulator rooms that give the appearance of both parties meeting in the same room. “You're buying a completely engineered room,” Doyle says, adding that the systems are normally used in executive briefing rooms. Two identical rooms in different offices are connected with high-def displays that make it appear as if both sides are separated only by a thin sheet of glass.

“Some people think that's cute and it certainly helps, for a second people forget they're looking through an IT connection, but the illusion doesn't last,” Doyle says. “It's kind of a boutique technology, and we compare it to the corporate jet. It's cool and it's got people talking about videoconferencing.”

A simulator room can cost upwards of half a million dollars, but the technology is starting to creep down to a more affordable level, according to Bob Wise, vice president of strategic development and marketing for technology provider InterCall. “The telepresence is still on the upper end,” he says. “However, it's come down a little bit. I don't think there's any question that on the equipment end it will continue to come down. There is phenomenal high-definition videoconferencing equipment today that is very reasonably priced.”

Plug-and-Play
Not only were older videoconferencing or Web conferencing systems limited to not-quite-ready-for-prime-time video quality, they were often so complicated that most users were afraid to touch them. “In most of the videoconferencing environments, there are people charged with going in prior to the call to make sure that everything is set up properly,” says Robert Durand, a member of LifeSize's marketing department. “A lot of people got turned off to video because it was in the one mahogany conference room, and you couldn't touch it.”

However, the industry is moving closer to a plug-and-play simplicity that promises to make it much easier for even the most technologically inept executives to make a connection between offices. “So you don't need someone from the AV group to come down and help you make a call,” Durand says.

Having an way easy to browse a directory of conferencing contacts is another recent development that helps make conferencing technology less of a headache, Doyle says. “The big thing that we have here … is that we have a directory so we can use our remote, and this is just like the remote that you use on your TV,” he says. “It's just totally easy to do it that way if you have everyone in your directory.”

Wise says that on the audio side, mobile tools make it possible for someone to enter a phone or Web conference with the push of a single button on his or her mobile phone or PDA. “We're working on even easier and faster methods of joining a conference call through mobile phones,” Wise says. “It's really all about ease of use.”

Making Changes
With conferencing technology becoming easier to use, companies are beginning to change the way they conduct business to make the most of it. “Through our experiences, we have customers who are clearly having their employees answer some questions about their travel needs and make a determination if conferencing could satisfy that need,” Wise says.

For example, he says, many of InterCall's customers are sales organizations, and are using conferencing tools for sales calls before making the trip out to visit customers. “A lot of those relationships, especially in sales, are made early on through conferencing,” Wise says. “It just gives you the opportunity to meet more often.”

“We get calls from our partners all the time over video, and we find we stay much more connected with them,” Doyle says. “And we see them more frequently.”

Durand says videoconferencing has the added advantage of keeping everyone focused as opposed to a conference call. “People are very present when they're on video, so meetings are shorter and more effective because people are more engaged,” he says. “Once people start using it … it becomes painful to be on a phone call, because you're used to that video.”

Still, even though conferencing tools are sophisticated enough today to make it seem as if someone is actually in the room with you, there can be no substitute for being together in reality. “If you can do it, whenever you're establishing a new relationship with a new partner, it's always a good idea to meet them face-to-face,” Doyle says. “There's a lot to be said for being able to shake someone's hand [and] take them out to lunch.”

“We would never tell [customers] that conferencing can completely replace all your face-to-face meetings,” Wise says.

Videoconferencing won't completely replace meeting partners face-to-face, but Doyle says he sees the possibility that it could someday replace the telephone. “I think once video is as ubiquitous as the telephone, I would say yes, but that's a long time coming,” he says. “I think what we'll find is that video will be the communication method of choice where it's possible because people are visual creatures; they would always prefer to interact with someone they can see.”

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