The Rise & Rise of Video Conferencing
So, this week, I‘ve been at a Trade Show in the UK (www.ucexpo.co.uk), and from previous years attendance at this show, I’ve noticed a distinct rise in the number of companies promoting video conferencing services, from either a software or hardware viewpoint. Companies that you may never have heard of such as Lifesize, Vidyo, SMB Solutions were all prominent, as well as the known names such as NEC, Microsoft and Polycom – all with shiny and bright video offerings.
Argyle and Cook (1976) have written the classic on this topic, Gaze and Mutual Gaze, which discusses the significance of eye contact and gaze in human interactions. They noted that eye gaze cues us in on when it is someone’s turn to speak, it creates a sense of intimacy between people, and it tells us where to focus our attention.
Why the sudden proliferation of Video Conferencing as a media source?
The reasons, in my opinion, are:
1. Green
Reduced costs, time saved, carbon footprints, insurance costs, content, customer assistance,
2. Technical
With the advent of superior tablet technology, and a strong(er) 3G connections, the opportunity for videoconferencing is ready made.
3. Company Unity:
Increase the unity of your employees located in different geographic regions. Video conferencing can provide a vital link between employees who communicate regularly by phone by giving a face to the voice. When your employees are more connected, they are able to be more effective as a team
4. Money
Gone are the days of proprietary systems and cameras. Today you can use a standard laptop with a built-in web camera to conduct your meetings. The online meetings don’t require equipment or software that is not already found in most offices. In addition, several companies now offer conferencing services at a price that even individuals and small organizations can afford.
This trend will only continue and become more prolific across the industries that we at Interactive Intelligence work in.
Thoughts?
Regards
Christian Ehinmola
There are other great reasons to use SIP, but I think some companies over-hype video to attempt to justify SIP migration.
However when you throw in something they don’t have (video) now the conversation has changed and they see something new coming from their investment. Technically we all understand the value of sip but for alot of those decision makers they don’t understand that.
Video is over-hyped and quite honestly still a little ahead of times in terms of adoption. I might be a great example of this since currently my phone, my tablet, my computer all have front facing cameras as well do the people i communicate with regularly. After the initial “playing around” with video on the devices I haven’t used it since for the reason it just doesn’t socially work at the moment. Another way to think about it is the large movement backwards we see in public communication trends among some demographics. People are more likely to txt than make voice calls, as this trend continues in personal communication you can expect that it will have some influence in the future in business communication. So if people would rather txt than call someone can you really expect them to video chat? In the general public what we see is people will naturally pick the level of communication that is convenient given the context of how important the message is and with video chat being above voice on that scale and voice being dropped in favor of txt and IM the common adoption and use of video chat doesn’t really seem to be a powerful feature for at least the next few years.