Comments on: Is Video Conferencing Over-hyped?

By: Einar Flydal

Einar Flydal — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:48:50 +0000

The basic findings in the 1990-ies, when a.o. I was myself into video conferencing field trials, was the following:
The more uncertainty about the people, the topics, the discussion, the outcome, etc, the more human bandwith is needed.
So, when people are known to each other, outcomes are evident beforehand, procedures are distinct and shared, etc, a phone-meeting will do fine. At the other extreeme, when CEOs what to chat about the world situation, they need to meet in persona, or virtually by using multiscreen “video walls”. In the middle between, there is Skype and poorer systems that might well do the job.
However, there are a lot of technical hazzle (color temperature of light, background colors, conference bridges, ventilation fans, location of camera to get eye contact, etc etc) that might ruin the video conference. Hence, stable conditions and trained support is mandatory to make the use systems – large or small – attractive enough for a second try.

By: Garrett Smith

Garrett Smith — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:11:28 +0000

@JohnP:

Your statement seems to concur with what Mr. Noll wrote.

It seems seeing is not as important as hearing and “understanding” the context of a conversation (which visual aides assist more with than say facial expressions).

Thanks for the input.

By: Garrett Smith

Garrett Smith — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:05:10 +0000

@Tsahi:

Well I guess I could say listen to a Cisco or Polycom quarterly earnings call. Or perhaps all of the marketing push that is currently behind the technology from the “big players.”

But my post was really commentary on Mr. Noll’s piece. And a solicitation for feedback on it from those more well versed than I (thanks!)

By: JohnP

JohnP — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:26:58 +0000

My customers *think* they want video conferencing. Then I show them GotoMeeting or WebEx or OpenMeetings or DimDim with a conference bridge. Then I explain that large companies use these tools internally for projects and have for almost a decade. Seeing the other person really isn’t that important, but seeing the same file or application is critical to team work. For example, having a project manager go over a schedule with different team members leads to dependency resolution. It also removes the requirement that everyone on the team have a license for an expensive software tool when they will never use it (MS-Project or MS-Visio).

Video conferencing has a place, but until you get into the $20K/location solutions, my opinion is that you are really getting what you want.

By: Tsahi Levent-Levi

Tsahi Levent-Levi — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 05:28:08 +0000

Garrett,
I would ask where do you see the hype?
Video conferencing is steadily (and somewhat slowly) growing year over year in enterprises. Add on top of that the people using Skype video and you’ve got a service that is being used.
I haven’t seen it covered as much as other services (anyone say twitter?), so I can’t see a hype around the service. It is true that video conferencing companies are pushing their service, touting it as the best thing since sliced bread, but that’s what companies do – glorify their services. I wouldn’t consider it as hype though.
Tsahi