Video Gets Real

In his just-out story about video conferencing, Fredric Paul attempts to answer the question, "Why YOU Aren't Using Video Conferencing." His article addresses several issues, but first you must watch the YouTube video he links to, which gave me a nice Friday chuckle.Paul hits the key resistance issues--most glaringly, the fact that people seem more self-conscious on camera than they are in person. Personally,I think another challenge to adoption isthat people are reluctant to give up their multi-tasking for a video conference (come on, we all do it on audio and web calls). That sais, one executive at a video conference company assures me that after about a month or two of routine video calls, people start to behave as badly as they do in in-person meetings--they eat, they text, they take bathroom breaks--which may not be a boon for productivity, but which certainly negates the "it makes me feel like i have an audience with the queen" argument.