On this day when one of the important people in the world (Tony Blair) will be talking to another bunch of important people (the Iraq Enquiry) over a “video link” I thought I would talk about the latest iteration of “video link” – “telepresence”.
If you can take major global decisions over a “video link” why does anyone travel anywhere?
Once upon a time companies invested loads of money in ISDN links and dedicated video conferencing equipment in an attempt to get their staff to travel less and to be more responsive. Many of them had a flurry of activity, training people how to use the specialist equipment. Once the facility became available the rooms where the equipment was housed were fully booked, but bit by bit the poor unsuspecting video conferencing equipment became neglected and unused. People found that the rewards for seeing someone on a screen were not high enough compared to the hassle of setting the conference up, getting the room booked and getting everything working. We discovered that voice was “good enough”.
The other week I was in a customer office and passed a set of five “video conferencing” rooms, in each of these rooms the equipment wasn’t even cabled in. I asked one of my colleagues there how long it had been like this. The answer “Ever since we moved in months ago”.
A few dedicated followers still use specialist video conferencing equipment but for most of us Video Conferencing Version 1.0 came and went.
Having discovered that it was too much hassle getting the dedicated equipment working we decided to try a different route. “Why don’t we give everyone a camera and then they can sit at their desk and be part of the conference?” we thought. But network bandwidth was limited, and cameras were expensive, and screens were only small. Each of us tried out desktop video conferencing, each of us thought it was great for a few minutes before we thought “what’s the point?”.
Most people I know have a USB connected camera somewhere in there desk or at their house; most of them are sat in boxes gathering dust.
Loads of kids still video conference their buddies but for the rest of us Video Conferencing Version 2.0 came and went.
Many products take until version 3.0 to be useful, could Video Conferencing be one of them?
Over the last few months a flurry of announcements and commentary has been expended on the new buzz word- “telepresence” (or Video Conferencing Version 3.0?).
If you haven’t a clue what I am talking about you should watch one of the many videos that are available (here, here, here).
At the same time the desktop video conferencing arena is going through a change as the quality is getting better and better.
But will these changes make us use it? Why didn’t I use video conferencing before?
This is a purely personal perspective, but I have heard others express similar views.
The face-to-face element of face-to-face meetings are overrated. The amount of personal effort I am willing to expend to get the face-to-face experience is very small. I normally work from home and using a telepresence type facility would require me to undertake some travelling. I’d need some convincing before I could see the value in the effort required. I’m one of a growing number of people in this situation. What I actually want is a far more realistic “around the piece of paper” experience. I want to be able to share a piece of paper and voice far more than to be able to share a face. I’d actually be more interested in sharing my hands than my face.
There are occasions when face-to-face is very important. They tend to be meetings within a particular context (negotiations, interviewing) but I don’t personally spend all day in those type of meetings.
There are some things that I do want from something I would call telepresence, especially when I’m working from home. I want to feel like I am in a team and I think that video could play a huge part in that. I want to feel that I am sat with a bunch of colleagues whom I could look at and ask for help in a way that is far less intrusive than Instant Messaging or the telephone. I suppose what I am asking for is ambient presence.
Discover more from Graham Chastney
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Graham Chastney 
Interesting, and I thoroughly agree that Video Conferencing in all of its forms (so far) has not made it for me (or many others). And from seeing the Cisco Telepresense stuff – I still don’t see it making it.
The use of video conferencing either at a personal level or a meeting is that it provides little added value. Seeing a bunch of slightly moving heads does not make much improvement to the conduct and productivity of a meeting. Part of the problem is that we haven’t developed the replacement set of gestures to replace what we’d do in a real face to face meeting. If we look at IM then we’ve replaced many verbal things with other de facto methods – emoticons, abbreviations, etc. There are no real equivalents (yet?) for video conferencing. Also IM is simpler as it is easy to filter out the multiple communications that occur at the same time. With both voice and video calls this is much more difficult.
I also agree that sharing some “work item” such as a document or slide show etc. is much much more valuable than seeing pretty pictures of people. This is the Webex-type of marketplace. I’d prefer this to become much more integrated than it currently is.
I do wonder, if there is a generational aspect here. I guess that I am much more of as radio listener than a TV watcher, more inclined to pick up podcasts than videocasts – except where it is essential for the subject. But many younger people today are far more immersed in the visual aspects and the prevalence of the video call is much more on IM peer to peer with friends. As these people come into a corporate environment wil lthey want more visual interaction with their virtual colleagues?
LikeLike