I came across this interesting article on no jitter written by Billy Chia which discusses video conferencing, and those who pronounce it as as a replacement for audio conferencing. The central argument is captured in the article’s headline: “Video won’t kill the audio star” (a great reference to The Buggles’ catchy one-hit-wonder tune). Billy explains that people are often (too) eager to pronounce the death of a particular technology once a new one arrives on the scene. He believes that the advent of video conferencing does not mean the end of voice-only communication. Instead, “Video provides an additional mode that lives in harmony with audio rather than replacing it.” Billy goes on to say that he sees the future of business communications as multi-modal, and that workers will effortlessly switch between different communication modes. So, in his view, video conferencing is – and will continue to be – an option which complements, but doesn’t replace, audio; each will have its place according to the communication need.
We would agree. We’ve spoken before about our view on video conferencing. We believe that ultimately it’s a very useful tool, but one that will likely never supersede audio and web conferencing. Like Billy, we think it will continue to sit alongside these activities.
Video seems to work best for specialist use cases rather than everyday meetings. For example, during interviews it really does add value to see everyone’s faces, whereas a weekly sales meeting may not be enriched by these sort of visuals. However, video conferencing still has an adoption problem, which we believe is due to a number of reasons. First, there is the technological complexity of using video-conferencing. Second, interoperability issues still persist. Third, video-conferencing remains costly. Most important, though, is that we believe that people on everyday conference calls just don’t want to be videoed! Very frequent conference callers tend not to be central to each meeting they partake in, so they will take the opportunity to multitask to stay on top of their daily tasks, which is not possible on video conference calls. Whether or not multitasking on calls in a good thing (and this is something else we have thoughts on), for now it is the business reality, and so perhaps less is more for video conferencing for the moment. Even when some of the issues with video conferencing are solved, we have no doubt that audio and web conferencing will continue to be very heavily used – as these activities continue to provide real benefit in business communication.
What do you think? Will video ever supersede audio and web conferencing, or will business communication continue to be multi-modal?
