Video conferencing: 2 years later, same results

I follow the video conferencing industry closely, so when I saw the headline "Why Video Conferencing Sucks" in my news reader, I had to click over. What I found was an opinion piece by TechNewsWorld columnist Rob Enderle.

He wrote about how video conferencing is still failing to meet business users' expectations in this heavily saturated market -- not only from a technology and cost perspective, but also a human perspective.

"The big problem that no one seems to want to address is that we generally don't like conversing for long looking someone else in the eye," Rob writes. This, he says, is a major reason "why people generally need to be forced to use these systems."

eCliniqua notes how ProtoSphere is humanizing collaboration in life sciences for clinical teams

One of the interesting people I met at DIA 2011 was Ann Neuer, a writer in the clinical trials industry. We chatted about collaboration and learning in the clinical space.

I filled her in on some new things we're seeing in life sciences, and why organizations have been using ProtoSphere to achieve that human-to-human interaction when holding conferences, meetings, and other events virtually.

Avatar: your key to equal contribution and opportunity

Much has been discussed and written about virtual environments achieving levels of immersion and interactivity that rival (and some believe exceed) face-to-face meetings. Much has also been written about increasing the retention of information shared in world.

Interacting in a virtual environment

But to many, the whys and hows surrounding this remain a mystery. Perhaps the most crucial, yet most misunderstood element driving such a high degree of engagement is the avatar.

An avatar projects individuals in the first person, allowing them to enter a common environment -- a conference room, classroom, etc. -- with other people and data sources. This achieves common presence, togetherness, and equality, enabling a high degree of interaction and sharing to occur.

It creates an any (person) to any (person or content) to any (time) scheme that is fundamental to highly interactive and productive encounters.

Attending a Web conference

Contrast this approach to the typical Web conferencing session that we have all endured. Each individual remains in their own separate and unique setting. It could be their office, home, hotel room, airport, or local coffee shop. And they stay there by themselves.

By its very construct, Web conferencing is based on a scheme of broadcast -- one person controlling and presenting to a group of dispersed individuals. Is that interaction? Is that equality of function? Or is that a one-person, hierarchical approach to collaboration?

This achieves a very interesting and counterproductive result. By limiting or preventing participants from dynamically interacting, sharing ideas, accessing content, and equally contributing to the task(s) at hand, traditional Web conferencing reinforces the sense of fragmentation and disconnection. Perhaps that is the key reason why a one (desktop) to many (participants) dynamic quickly leads to participant tune-out.

It might sound a little goofy, but your avatar is your key to equality. It provides you the freedom to engage and contribute when and how you choose.

Against this backdrop, it becomes clear that avatars are perhaps the most important human factor in virtual immersive environments. By dynamically connecting the right people to the right content at the right time, avatars enable the types of unrestricted interactions we all demand when tasked with contributing to a group initiative.

What do you think, and what's been your experience? How essential are avatars to real online collaboration?

Enterprises seeking to add the human factor back to training

One of the things that has been coming out of some recent customer conversations I've been a part of is how to leverage employees' "tribal knowledge." This is a fancy way of describing their experience and history at the organization. How can we share that with new, younger employees?

For example, I was talking to a customer who has been told explicitly by the younger crowd that they often learn more from their older, more experienced colleagues through live classroom training sessions, compared to taking e-learning courses by themselves.

They're finding in-person teaching is a more effective way to share, gain, and retain knowledge than the individualized, more "self-taught" approaches that you get from e-learning programs.

Our customer's concern is that the industry's transition to solo e-learning-style training will hamper knowledge transfer overall. Some of the risks they see include resistance to change; elimination of most of the social contact and interactions; lack of direct mentoring, coaching, and leadership; and increased sense of remoteness and disconnect.

About 10 years ago, we saw the pendulum swing from a focus on classroom-based instruction, to a focus on e-learning-based instruction. This removed live, human interaction (or human factor, as we've referred to it on our blog). Now customers are asking us how they can get that back.

Meanwhile, they have tightly managed travel and venue budgets, and/or their training facilities have been recently shut down or turned into cubicle farms.

It's clear that trainers are seeking to put the human factor back into training and add socialization to the classroom, while putting a lid on travel costs. Effective knowledge transfer and knowledge retention simply can't happen without the human element.

Tandberg's desktop video conferencing tool: Once telepresence, always telepresence

CAMERA READY? Many enterprise users say no

I don't really have an axe to grind with Tandberg. But it just seems every time I see news about Tandberg and the way it sells video, my alarm bells go off.

So with apologies and all due respect to the good folks at Tandberg, I really need to respond to their recent announcement.

The company released desktop telepresence solution, EX90 the other week. I have two main thoughts on it.

First off, it might be a step in the right direction as far as enterprise collaboration goes. Any tool that reduces costs and increases efficiency can be advantageous for enterprise users.

But it still doesn't solve the broad distribution and enterprise penetration issue surrounding telepresence. At the risk of being repetitive, there are a lot of reasons I don't see all employees in an organization using video every time they want to collaborate. Rather than rehash all my viewpoints, I'll refer you back to some of my previous posts on telepresence.

This also brings to mind an article written by Kishore S. Swaminathan, Chief Scientist at Accenture. He penned a piece for the company's Outlook journal last month, saying, "Now, a new medium, the videoconference, is rapidly emerging as an important way for executives to communicate with their employees, upper management and customers. By understanding the medium and mastering its dynamics, you can significantly improve your effectiveness as an executive."

Dr. Petra Bosch on her ProViWo research project, in her own words

Last week we posted our podcast interview with Dr. Petra Bosch about her latest research project, Professional Collaboration and Productivity in Virtual Worlds (ProViWo). If you're at work right now and unable to pipe sound from your speakers, or if you would rather read through the interview, you're in luck. We've had it transcribed. The transcript includes the complete interview between Dr. Bosch and our blogger Janelle, proofed for clarity.

ProViWo research project: How virtual worlds can be used for professional collaboration

Dr. Petra Bosch

Virtual worlds might traverse the globe, but I've found that they can still fit under a microscope. A virtual microscope, if you will. (What else would you expect anyway? ;-))

Dr. Petra Bosch-Sijtsema and her colleague, Dr. Anu Sivunen, are leading a new research project that studies how virtual worlds can be used for professional collaboration, and if virtual worlds can enhance productivity in globally distributed teams.

They've dubbed their project Professional Collaboration and Productivity in Virtual Worlds (ProViWo). Janelle talked to Dr. Bosch recently about it, and we wanted to share their conversation with you in a podcast.



The project is based out of Aalto University in Finland, where Dr. Bosch and Sivunen are researchers, and is being conducted in close corporation with Stanford University here in the U.S.

Dr. Anu Sivunen

Drs. Bosch and Sivunen began their study in fall 2009, so they're still in their initial research phase. Right now they're interviewing a spectrum of companies that are using virtual worlds.

Eventually, they'll explore managerial and user perspectives on virtual worlds at work, and the various collaboration and productivity possibilities. They aim to complete their project in 2012.

If you're interested in exploring virtual worlds for your company, if you've already deployed one, or if you just want to keep up with the latest industry research developments, I'd encourage you to take a listen to Janelle and Dr. Bosch's podcast.

We hope to follow Drs. Bosch and Sivunen throughout their project, so watch the blog for an update on their progress.

Cisco's pipe dream: mainstream enterprise adoption of telepresence

I've written before about why Cisco's push to bring video to the desktop won't achieve critical mass in the enterprise. While telepresence might be justified as an investment for large conference rooms in global enterprises, it fails to address major cost and complexity problems and human factors issues that have historically prevented large-scale video deployments from achieving mainstream adoption.

Joel Stein reminded me of this in a recent Time Magazine article he wrote. He covered problems surrounding Skype and video presence, saying, " ... Skype breaks the century-old social contract of the phone: We pay close attention while we're talking and zone out while you are."

That's just one of several funny, yet compelling comments Stein makes in a great op-ed column that, I think, is a must read for anyone interested in the human factors that drive communication and collaboration.

You can easily say the same of Cisco's WebEx, Microsoft's Live Meeting, and other screen- and app-share tools. How many times have you been on a WebEx or similar conference and put the phone on mute, checked e-mail, surfed the Web, took a mobile phone call, or walked away from your desk?

The fact of the matter is, we don't want to do video all the time. Cisco's pursuing a pipe dream, just like AT&T before them. The first video phones were shown at the 1964 New York World's Fair. They're still not mainstream. And they never will be.

James Cameron's Avatar shows parallels to immersive virtual worlds for business

Avatar.

It has been a word we have been using for awhile now to describe an anthropomorphized human network connection in an immersive virtual environment. However, the traditional definition is as follows:

In Hinduism, Avatar or Avatara describes the descent of a deity from heaven to earth. In English, we translate avatar to mean "incarnation," "appearance," or "manifestation." And for us computer nerds, we have known avatars as representations of ourselves or our alter egos. It could be in the form of a 3-D model, 2-D icon, or text construct as found in early online gaming.

I think after this weekend, the word will be more broadly understood by the masses, as James Cameron's new movie, "Avatar", opened across the country. Being a CGI (computer-generated imagery) fan from jump street, I of course had to go day one. How was it? In a single word, stunning. Go see it in a properly equipped digital theater, with the funky 3-D glasses, and you will be "immersed."

The line between video conferencing's success and failure

As we talk about human factors here on the blog, I was reminded of a white paper I read that covered the findings of a study on video conferencing. In the study, University of North Carolina researchers identified recommendations for planning and implementing video conferencing to support interaction and collaboration among large groups.

You can click over to the white paper to read more about their suggestions, which I thought were insightful. But I was particularly interested by some of the background studies that the white paper referenced. These studies identified two challenges when groups try to collaborate using video conferencing, both of which arise from human factors:

One, video conferencing is not the best environment for brainstorming. And two, video conferencing is not the best environment for conflict resolution. Video conferencing tends to be an environment where just one person is comfortable talking at a time. It can be difficult, as the studies find, to share information, bounce ideas off one another, negotiate and bargain, ask questions, resolve disagreements, and make decisions.

All of this can obviously hinder collaboration, which takes me back to an argument I've made before on the blog: If you blend live or prerecorded video with other collaboration tools unified by a 3-D infrastructure, video becomes more useful, less complicated, and far less costly. Video conferencing might be justified as an investment for large conference rooms in global businesses, but it fails to address the human and cost factors that have, to date, prevented large-scale video deployments from achieving critical mass in the enterprise.

Avatars help bring context to content in enterprise virtual worlds

When we develop environments in ProtoSphere for clients, we invest a lot of time and creativity to ensure our avatars accurately resemble the people behind them, and properly reflect the corporate culture of the world they inhabit.

It's an important human factor that facilitates effective communication in an enterprise virtual world. Business journalist Kara Ohngren picked up on this crucial aspect of virtual worlds for business when she covered ProtoSphere in general, and our avatars in particular, in a piece for Entrepreneur Magazine. It's a good read!

Telepresence and live video: From intrusion to invaluable

In my last post reacting to the Cisco-Tandberg deal, I promised to explain why Cisco's push to bring video to the desktop won't break out of the enterprise's largest conference rooms.

Here are several reasons why, all of which arise from the human factors of virtual collaboration.

Modern teleworkers don't always dress for success. I'm writing this post, taking calls, and "collaborating virtually" at a time of day when my mind is sharp, but my appearance might not be. Maybe I worked until the wee hours of the morning, caught some sleep, and am now back at it. I might look tired. I might need a shave. I might not be wearing a tie. I might be grabbing breakfast at my desk.

I certainly don't want to be on a video conference right now. Of course, if I knew there was a board meeting, I'd be prepared, and telepresence or other live video would be fine with me. But collaboration mostly happens without an appointment, without a formal meeting, often without advance preparation, at all hours of the day and night.

The last thing most workers want is to have the red light go on when they least expect it, or when they don't believe they are as presentable, appearance wise, as they want to or should be. Human factors 1, telepresence 0.

Unified Communications: On a clear day, you can see the chasm

Some things never grow old. It's been 18 years since Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm" was published, yet his basic premise rings as true today as it did when the book first hit store shelves.

Amazon.com's description puts it well: "[Author Geoffrey Moore's] chasm theory describes how high-tech products initially sell well, mainly to a technically literate customer base, but then hit a lull as marketing professionals try to cross the chasm to mainstream buyers."

But you can't cross the chasm on marketing factors alone. There are interesting human factors involved. And even if the UC industry meets its marketing challenges, the human factors will, I believe, prevent unified communications from achieving critical mass in the marketplace.

That's the bad news. The good news is, these same human factors are driving, slowly but steadily, increasing adoption of virtual worlds in the enterprise. We have to do more formal studies on this, but the anecdotal evidence from our customers is compelling. (And more studies are coming.)

Avatars vs. video and what IBM's Chuck Hamilton thinks of ProtoSphere's SharePoint integration

The interview was a case of big software vendor vs. little software vendor, but they seemed to be on a level playing field when it came to their thoughts on virtual worlds. Chuck Hamilton, Program Manager of the Learning and New Media Program at IBM, spent a few minutes talking with Ron at 3D TLC about what he's seeing in the virtual worlds industry and the promise the technology holds for the enterprise.

Ron also asked Chuck point blank what he thinks of ProtoSphere's integration with Microsoft SharePoint. (But you've got to watch the video to see his answer. I know, sneaky, sneaky. :)) The conversation turned to the topic of human factors in a virtual environment, and the idea of using an avatar vs. video while in world. And if that leaves you hanckering for more, Ron is actually in the midst of working on a post about human factors now, and we'll have that for you on the blog soon.