My #1 Prediction

It's that time of the year were people are making different predictions and resolutions.

I will save you my standard resolutions to lose 10 pounds and put away more money into my RRSP's. I am going to focus here on a single prediction that I think will really hit it's stride this year.

Video conferencing!



Conferences and meetings, love them or hate them, are a daily part of many peoples lifes.

For many years I have been on conference calls and always imagined them as productive good sessions. I've recently had the pleasure of being in an enviornment that truly utilizes video conferencing.

In a global workplace often your co-workers are located thousands of miles away, some of the people I have worked with closely over these years are people I have never met!

Video-conferencing for years has been available but has always been looked at as a novelty used by executives but there are many great benefits to using this. They include;


Bringing teams closer together

It can always be a challenge when dealing with a remote team to build camaraderie. You inevitably will build a stronger relationship with someone in the next office over than someone two thousands kilometers away.

Humans are visual beings and we respond more to stimuli if it's audio and visual. Not many people listen to radio at home if they have the option of watching television.

Costs

Yes, there is a up front cost for the equipment that could run you into the thousands depending on what sort of equipment and network you have.

In this day of higher costs of airfare, efficiency improvements and environmental awareness it can be very difficult to rationalize hopping on a plane to fly to a different part of the country for a single meeting, yet people do that all the time.

In the Edmonton Journal recently they summarized how often local politicians fly back and forth between Edmonton and Calgary, several of them average many flights a week at costs an average cost of $1500 a flight.

I had the extreme pleasure of recently attending a meeting with some Telus representatives here who gave were very excited about some of the new technology they were working on, including "full wall" video.

If video conferencing can bring teams closer together and represent significant costs then it's a an easy sell. It's going to become more and more common in workplaces both in offices and at homes to see this equipment! I use Tandberg equipment myself.