My dad works at Polycom in the video conferencing division, so I’ve seen and heard about all manner of (hardware based) video conferencing over the years. It always seemed like a good idea — right? — and I’ve been in many conference rooms with Polycom and other people’s equipment where we both had video conferencing work flawlessly and fail utterly.
Obviously, in the consumer space “video conferencing” or “web-cams” are a big deal. They’re fun, even if you’re not doing porn! But, in business, I’ve never gotten the feel that video conferencing took off. After 9/11, there was a slight optimism in the air and the billboards to and fro the AUS. Now, I’m not saying that video conferencing “failed,” just that it didn’t reach a sort of “everyone’s doin’ it” momentum. For example, when a new company starts, they don’t think, “first thing we gotta do is get some video conferencing gear.”
Desktop Sharing “Distraction”
As I was trying to hunt down a WebEx plugin to play this webinar on OS X (side-note: AHHH! WebEx!), I got to thinking: WebEx and friends are certainly a, though not the, nail in the coffin of hardware based video conferencing. Now, the difference is desktop sharing: it turns out people really, really want to share their desktops (to run presentations and do demos) rather than just see each other. Now, while I absolutely hate having a presentation over desktop sharing vs. just getting the PDF or PPT, people seem to love it. Thankfully IBM, Sun, Eclipse, and many of our more long-term clients make it a practice of sending over the presentation. Funny side-note: new companies usually go through the cycles of using WebEx, hating it, and then just emailing out presentations.
But, desktop sharing focus makes me think that seeing someone’s face in remote-meetings is over-rated. That applies, at least and perhaps “only,” in the software development and briefing/consulting context I’m thinking of: I have no idea what the uptake is in health, military, and other verticals. I sure wouldn’t be a big fan of always having my face on in every briefing I do: I’d have to comb my hair and wear a nice shirt all the time! Man, and what’s more dorky looking than wearing a headset?
To my mind, then, it seems like there’s room for partnerships and integration between folks like Polycom on one side, and WebEx and Adobe on the other. It seems like both sides would benefit greatly from being able to cross-launch into each other. I’m sure Cisco is drooling over the idea. I don’t follow the video conferencing space at all, so I’m not even sure if that’s already happening.
Disclaimer: IBM, Sun, and Eclipse are clients. As is, or will be, Adobe. Like I said, my dad works at Polycom, so take that thorny bias however you like ;>
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