#videonor

Our friends at Videonor did it again... a great blog post from earlier this summer. Below are a few great personal takeaways from that blog post.

Virtually any thought of “traveling without moving” in 1996, was insane for most people. Those who had an internet-connection used a 28.8Kbps modem, or if you were really into getting through the 100.000 web-pages present at the time, you´d go all in with the 33.6Kbps modem.

Takeaway: Too Funny and too true. Maybe I am dating myself but I also looked at Star Trek and how people were holograms and transported from place to place then throw in video communication via that screen... "Kiiiiiiiiiiirk"... just decades ahead of its time. 

2010, just before leaving my former employer for Videonor, I made one last customer related trip – a status meeting. Long story short; 7.5 hours of traveling, a 2 hour meeting, my expertise needed for about 15 minutes, and the whole time, I was staring at a Tandberg video conferencing system in the corner, with a flower on top of it.  And make no mistake, the flowers looked ok but I was seconds away from getting up yelling “nobody put´s baby in a corner”. That’s when I knew I had done the right thing. Videoconferencing was my call. World – prepare to be changed.

Takeaway: For many of us video conferencing has changed our world but unfortunately for the masses it is has yet to change their world. Video adoption is up globally but the airports are even more packed as are the highways.

Since then I have used all my time working to get partners and customers hooked on using video conferencing. Not just selling it, but making it matter to the customers. Make it worth their time listening to our message, with hopes they join the video revolution and reap the benefits.

A friend of mine once said “I only travel if there is beer in the invitation”. I do agree, to a certain level. I have never believed that video could replace all physical meetings involving 2 or more locations.  The point is, that most meetings, could one way or another utilize video. If not to reduce the travelling, but to increase the visual contact between the physical meeting. And the part I have learned to love the most in our video-enabled organization, I have all my experts with me on, in all meetings, wherever my meetings are, or wherever my experts are located.

For anyone familiar with video, most of this is obvious. But still the utilization of video in most organization is not good enough. Old endpoints, bad remotes, little or no knowledge about possibilities. Through the year’s interfaces for users have become easier to use, but for many companies, they had bad experiences and they have put their “babies” in the corner.

Takeaway: True on so many levels. "Belly to belly" as I call them are those meetings where you just have to meet in person. Most meetings can be held on video but old habits die hard if at all. I have found in my years in the business that IT purchased a video system, they either quit or are too busy to bother with it. Old software, not connected to remote / mobile clients (ipads, iPhones) and just a general disdain for the big expensive black box that is blamed for screwing up their networks. 

With the technology now bringing together older video endpoints with Skype4B, consumer Skype, browser, phone or device of your own choice, the possibilities are endless. Being objective or not, I do think it is virtual insanity to not use the force of these tools everyday.