Webinar Wire

Time Is On Our Side

Posted by Ken Molay July 28 2008 9:52 PM EDT

"I'm hoping our culture changes to the point that we all recognize the value of time and do more virtual collaboration."

That's from an article in Computerworld, written by John Halamka, the CIO at CareGroup Healthcare System, CIO and associate dean for educational technology at Harvard Medical School, chairman of the New England Health Electronic Data Interchange Network, chair of the national Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel, and a practicing emergency physician. Think using his time effectively might possibly be a concern?

He used the quote in context with requests to give presentations for education, communication, and collaboration. He said that a conference call, WebEx meeting (genericizing that term... watch out!), or videoconference is a great use of his time, while sitting in an airport for half a day because of a canceled flight is not. Hey... your flight doesn't have to be canceled to waste a half day, what with shuttle buses, security lines, gate delays, and hub-and-spoke routing. The time spent tangential to "wheels up" time is likely to be more than the flight time anyway!

We're seeing some interesting confluences of pressures legitimizing and rationalizing remote conferencing for people that previously shied away from it. It's not just a question of time... Now we have convenience issues, frustration/annoyance issues, privacy issues, cost issues, and ecological issues passing the tipping point for many businesspersons.

I haven't seen independent research or statistics on the subject, but my anecdotal experiences and chats with contacts at many web conferencing providers indicate that we are seeing a spike in business across the board. And that's just my familiarity with the US market. International use has nowhere to go but up. Wainhouse Research today put out a press release summarizing their study on conferencing futures for the Asia Pacific market. They see opportunities for another $6 billion in audio conference revenues and $1.3 billion in web conference revenues.

I think Mr. Halamka is going to get his wish... We are smack in the middle of that culture shift and virtual collaboration is just about to break wide open.

[A non-webinar P.S. to readers in the San Francisco Bay Area... Take his drive seriously... I used to love that route when I lived out there. And drinks/dinner at Duarte's is a treat that is not duplicated elsewhere in the country. If it's cold and foggy in Pescadero, have an Irish Coffee in the bar... They use real beaten cream. And don't miss the ollalieberry pie when it's in season.]