The virtual meeting repackaged

NOTE: Chaim Yudkowsky, CPA, CITP, is an MACPA member, director of IT for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington, D.C., and president of Byte of Success Inc., a technology consulting company specializing in helping small and mid-size business grow by using technology.

By Chaim Yudkowsky, CPA, CITP

"Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation."

E-mail, instant messaging and wireless communication are just some examples of the manifestations of this horror envisioned by artist and poet Jean Arp.

The pervasive meeting mentality in organizations as they embrace collaborative efforts adds to the dissonance of our hectic world. Still, the disruption of that collaboration can be reduced using technology to leverage the advantages of comfort and familiarity of working from the desktop.

Many vendors appreciating the ubiquity of connectivity have included collaborative tools in their traditionally islands-of-work-oriented software. The software is now "collaboration-enabled." One set of tools is designed to truly be the empowerer of old-fashioned getting together to get something done, share ideas, or discuss and reach decisions. This category of software goes by many names, and vendors use these names to give a unique identity to their products. The products are all facilitators of a virtual meeting with many specific potential uses, including:

distance learning / virtual learning,
presentations,
meetings,
group brainstorming, and
group chatting.

For the remainder of this column, I will examine some of the success factors to consider when buying or subscribing to a collaboration-dedicated tool.

Components

What types of features can be built into these software tools? While it depends how you will be using the software, the most flexible solutions offer most of the following:

Brainstorming tools: We need ways of encouraging the expression of a variety of thoughts and organizing them into something meaningful.
Meeting storage: Not only do we want to meet or learn, we also often need to capture a diary of events for later reference or for sharing with other groups. Sometimes, as in training, we need that capture for ourselves to refresh our knowledge of a meeting or to replay it, even on the go. Think MP3, Flash or Media Player.
Regular meeting place: In brick-and-mortar offices, we frequently associate a meeting or training with a physical place. These tools can help create a virtual identity, a common place to address an issue, to spontaneously tap when needed.
Application sharing: The ability to stretch every desktop and every application into the world of collaboration is very powerful. Extending that universality with the ability to push everyone to the same Web site can add eloquence to conversation.
Multiple presenters: Who controls the presentation? Having the ability to involve many in the leadership of a discussion, to create active dialogue, makes the disruption of silence more justifiable.

Infrastructure concerns

These tools must engage all of the users. To effectively accomplish that, it must be secure, fast and make available the ability to involve as many senses as possible. Issues to consider include the following:

What mediums should the software allow — audio, video, slide shows?
What connectivity is necessary to achieve a satisfactory user experience? If we are involving telecommuters or those in remote, slowly connected satellite offices, will their speed hamper their adoption or embrace of this technology?
What security controls are there for a meeting or an event as it happens? What about afterward? The answer starts with login authentication and overall access protections, extends to the encryption of the actual data transmission over private or public connectivity, and ends with content storage security.
What is the integration with other organizational tools like Microsoft Outlook?
What are the data storage space requirements of the software and how much will it grow as our organization integrates it into our daily process?
How do we measure success of effective adoption? This means that a tool could have reporting features that capture frequency, length, amount of use and its impact. One element that should be measured is simple event or meeting attendance.

Buying services

Many of the software solutions are subscription services that outsource much of the infrastructure to a software or telecommunications company experienced with meetings. The vendors selling these services will be contracted on a per-minute / per-use basis or on a contractual commitment basis. The decision between the two choices impacts not only budget and cost but also how your organization will assimilate technology-assisted collaboration.

There are other decisions to be made once a vendor is chosen:

Term of commitment (usually one, two or three years).
Number of seats / simultaneous users: Vendors may license a subscription by specific named user or by simultaneous user.
Service-level agreement: Vendors must commit that what we are buying will be usable.
Active account management: Vendors should work with us to educate how to best use these tools.
Usage-based fees: Are all the parts of the service included in a retainer, or is there a part that will still be usage billed? Some services require that the audio portion of the tool remain usage billed.
Overage charges: What happens when you exceed your contracted maximums of storage, frequency of use, or voice and video streaming minutes? Does it become the monster that we usually associate with runaway cell phone usage overages?

Barriers

There are substantive barriers to incorporating collaboration tools into our organizational cultures:

Building awareness is the starting point. Our people must know that it exists, how it works, and what to use it for.
Just having it is not enough. This tool must be available for use. This is twofold availability: (a) it must be easy to set up and use, and (b) it must be accessible.
Our users must understand its value. We must present a clear understanding of how it will help them do their jobs better and more efficiently.
The tool must help build confidence in its function and the process around it must build confidence in its use. This is a cascading outcome of availability, value and practice combined with the reporting and anecdotal success momentum of accountability. Users must know that it will make them succeed.
After early excitement wears off, complacency must be eliminated. As with other technology tools that require creativity and effort to involve in a process, our users must be challenged not to view collaboration tools as fads or the next neat thing and then move on.

Some of the choices

There are hundreds of vendors promoting their products as collaborative tools. The most popular and the starting point for anyone considering one is Microsoft LiveMeeting (main.livemeeting.com), Macromedia Breeze (www.macromedia.com/software/breeze) and Webex (www.webex.com).

By turning off our wireless device and using a collaboration tool to make ourselves more productive, maybe we can realize a world with Jean Arp's legend of silence for at least a few moments!

Contact this Author: < Chaim Yudkowsky > yudkowskyc@yahoo.com

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