I have been reading Stuart’s weblog for some time. It is always interesting to read interviews with bloggers you like because you get deeper insights into their thinking and writing.
Excerpts from a Robin Good interview around one of his current obsessions – voice communications:
a collection of new products suggests that there is a cost revolution in the making.
To date my perspective of Web conferencing is best characterised by WebEx. Id admit I find these clunky.
Theres always a parallel phone call running with the data that is on the screen. So the environment is overly structured from the beginning.
Book the call. Have the presentation, no or limited back chat etc. Plus it is simply expensive. Yep it is cheaper than flying people around and saves time.
I see more control coming to the desktop to enable more spontaneity, and rapid answers.
I personally believe that voice centric IM is coming (eg Skype +) and will be adapted to conference calls. Behaviour will change dramatically when organizing no longer pre-empts need action now. Automated synching of presence is rocketing towards us.
Ive also seen some products that suggest new virtual conferencing support amongst real physical conferences. These could really leverage social aspects, Spoke, ZeroDegrees etc. type spontaneous meetups.
These mini-conferences may just be the place we see a real explosion. Some of these require no network at all just Wi-Fi cards and a group of people in the same place. Thus the old idea of getting business cards may just be supplanted by networking new introductions and connections more efficiently.
Then there are some new collaborative ways of using information that may revolutionize the moments in which we collaborate.
Software is going P2P, Voice call costs are trending to zero.
