Monday, March 17, 2008

Virtual Meeting

Over spring break I visited San Francisco, CA and had the opportunity to visit reputable companies in the Silicon Valley. One such company was Cisco Systems. They are at the forefront of video conferencing, where they have developed meeting rooms with audio systems, plasma screens, and video cameras to simulate a board-room meeting, yet with counterparts in remote locations. They called their system “Telepresence.”

Although the package costs $300,000 USD to buy, it would serve large corporations very well, as they could gain huge cost savings from having managers being able to save time and money from traveling to far off locations for meetings. I was able to experience the video conferencing where fellow students were placed in separate meeting rooms. The desk, seating 10 people, were equipped with speakers and microphones. They were three cameras placed in different directions and three plasma screens next to each other, to create the platform. It worked surprisingly well and you could make eye contact with people across the screen.

You can watch a video about it from YouTube:



Video taken from www.youtube.com and provided by Cisco Systems

The disadvantage of such a live and realistic video-conferencing solution, was that you know if a person is not paying attention if they are reading emails, checking their blackberries etc, which you would not know over teleconferencing. In some ways, the meetings are too real and too transparent.

Also in some ways, it cannot overcome face-to-face meetings because you lose the personal touch, there is less trust and camaraderie and it cannot go that extra distance to close the gap. For example, we met a secretary through a plasma screen, and he looked very real. We did not realize he was on TV, until we came closer, as he could see us through video and therefore we could interact with him. It was a very funny experience. However, while on the tour of the Cisco building, we met him on the second floor, and he physically looked very different and seemed more approachable.

There are huge advantages to virtual teams and using the web to conduct meetings, which can create convenience, with possible time and cost reductions. However, for certain meetings such as meeting new clients, face-to-face contact may still be necessary to build trust.

3 comments:

Raphael Jaras said...

I bet it was an awesome spring break if you got to do all that Deepak. You had an interesting view on virtual brainstorming when people are all speaking via video conferencing. The conferencing your talking about doesn't follow the same idea of brainstorming alone and then sharing the solutions online. When the brainstorming or conference is done the way you described it can be just as effective and much more convenient if the people speaking had all met before. I agree with you that initial meetings should all take place in person. Great blog post and video.

Kendra said...

It's interesting that you mention a downfall to virtual communication is that you can see if someone is not paying attention. But I think this is the way businesses are working. If you look back to our conversation in class of how businesses are looking more at what their employees are doing, it seems that companies want to have more control over what is going on in their office space. I think this is more positive in terms of video conferencing because I think people should be paying attention in meetings. A main problem in them are that employees may be checking their blackberries when they should be paying attention. I feel this would help keep more control on the job.

Timur Khalif said...

Wow, that sounds like an amazing spring break. I am very impressed with your experiences and would like to learn more. I found it interesting that you mentioned at a virtual conference, you were able to see what the other members were doing and what they were contributing. This is beneficial in business because employers like to monitor their employees and this way they could be sure that everyone is actually contributing instead of like you said, checking their email or blackberry. Although, I agree with your argument that face to face meetings are better, I believe that virtual communication, even with its downfalls can benefit a business more and allow the employees to work more efficiently in the comfort of their office. It also saves businesses the money of traveling. Great post and i would like to learn more about your experience.