NetMeeting, a Dinosaur?

A couple weeks ago, a friend and I were asked to prepare a four hour session about web 2.0 for a leadership training course of one of our joint customers. They wanted an emphasis on collaboration, marketing and increased customer interaction. What made things interesting is that my friend lives and works in North America, while, as you know, I am living in Brussels. To make things even more interesting, my friend cannot be physically in the training room, but will have to call in remotely. This will really force us to use all the capabilities of the Internet. One of them that came to my mind immediately was obviously NetMeeting. I am saying obviously, because this is a tool both of us have been using over the years.

Googleling (is this actually English?) the term NetMeeting, I ran into a couple interesting pieces of information. First I found "The Web Conferencing Blog" where David Chao points out it is really a hassle to use the product as setting up the connection is lengthy and difficult and consists in getting IP addresses and typing them in. And yes, this is an issue I have personally experienced a number of times already, so I can relate to the post. However, NetMeeting is a tool that is  recognized and accepted by many IT departments. There exist many other tools, many of which are more effective and faster, but either they are not free, or not "safe" enough for the IT experts. David is also pointing out the product is obsolete and not ported to Vista.

Here I have to disagree with David, as I found on Kurt Shintaku's blog a note dated November 2nd (can I now time travel?) and pointing to the Beta version of NetMeeting 3.02 for Vista.

The reason we plan to use NetMeeting is that, despite the unfriendliness of the set-up of the connection, it is very easy to share control. In the training we are giving, we are sharing short sessions, and so being able to take control over at each session needs to be quick and fast.

So, yes, NetMeeting may sound like a dinosaur, but then a well preserved one that still provides a lot of service to many people.

Telepresence, is this StarWars?

The other day, I had a memorable experience. It looked to me a little like StarWars. I was told I had to meet with some researchers and a customer of ours. The meeting was going to take place in the Netherlands, but the scientists would be in the US. Frankly, I had some difficulty understanding what they meant, till I got there.

We were introduced in a room with half an oval table and three large flat screens in front of us. On the screen appeared a number of people in what looked like the other half of the same room. The illusion was complete. If I made abstraction of the screen frames, I would have had the impression of really being in the same room. And then the dialogue started. The discussion was initiated in a low and soft voice. There was no need to scream, no noise beside the voice of the person who spoke. Suddenly I interrupted him, and to my uttermost astonishment, he stopped immediately, turned to me and listened.

No, I have been in video conferences before. I have never seen anything like this. We even had a demo of a device they were developing. I had actually not realized that, on top of the three screens I talked about at the begin, was another screen that serves to collaborate. They shared computer screens with us and so we could see the demo that was performed on their halve of the table with the computer measurements that were affected by it. This was extremely impressive I have to say. Our customer very quickly became enthusiastic about the device and started discussing characteristics, usage etc. We had been able to gain his attention at short notice without having to travel across the Atlantic. This was really efficient use of our time. By the way, I learned that the room was a "Hale Room" from Hewlett-Packard.

Have you had such experiences? What do you think about it?

Kill the Business Trip? ... Really

In yesterday's on-line issue, Forbes Magazine ran an article entitled "Kill the Business Trip", speaking about web-based conferencing technologies such as Polycom and Webex. I've had the privilege to use both on multiple occasions, and frankly, I am not sure what to think about them. Yes, they are a little more reliable than NetMeeting, but depending on the load on the Internet, the time of day, the amount of people in the conference, they can be very slow. As they are often used for presentations, I have ended up a number of times watching to one slide while the presenter (to whom I am linked via the telephone) is already talking about the next one.

It's actually a good brain exercise, as it forces you to remember the key points to look at in the next slide, when that one appears. I am rarely using such web-based conferencing in cross continent activities as they are not reliable and often make you loose quite some time or irritate some of the attendees. I have a tendency to send the slides ahead of time and point out to the audience when I move from one to the other. That has actually given me much more satisfaction than the tools described above.

But to come back to the original question of the article, will such tools kill business trips? Well, I do not believe so. Yes they facilitate working together (when everything goes well), but do not replace personal contact in any way form or shape. So, my answer, as you probably realize, is a plain no.

Mots clés Technorati : Collaboration,Conferencing,Travel