Enterprise Technology By Phil Edholm

Older: Video and Collaboration Blog 1
Newer: 2007 Vision Video Series Posted

Video and Collaboration Blog 2

By Phil October 23, 2007 7:41 pm

Back from vacation - in Santa Clara

As indicated in the last blog, different tasks require different communications modalities. If we plot relationship between the communicating parties on a vertical axis and different Communications modalities on the vertical, we can develop a plot of acceptable communications for different levels of relationship.

mm-comms-1.gif

As can be seen, while Face to face is critical when there is little relationship, as we work together closely over a period of time we can use communications modalities that have lower content and eventually even non-real-time. This leads to identifying three "zones" of communications; the selling zone, the collaboration zone and the Grandma zone.

mm-comms-2.gif

In the selling zone, the participants are "selling" to each other, not necessarily in the pejorative sense of sales, but rather in the sense that visual clues are critical to successful communications. Whether getting a date or selling an idea, body language and responses are critical. As the relationship grows and the communications move to a more task oriented path, the collaboration zone comes in. In this zone the participants have a relationship and are focused to the task. As they are not selling, they do not need the visual clues. Finally, in the Grandma zone, familial relationship once again brings visual information tot he fore; grandma wants to see the grandchildren.

The challenge is that the place where video is most critical; in the selling zone, is where it is the hardest to achieve. Many companies have introduced video conferencing, only to see it atrophy after initial use. In most cases, this is because the video was being used in collaborative forms. The recent explosion of Telepresence systems is an indication of the value of video in selling situations. The applications that are focused are wher selling is always going on; in Executive Briefings, corporate board meetings, executive strategy, etc. This is an excellent use of video.

Finally, culture has a large impact on the use of video. In many Asian cultures, saying "no" to a partner is considered to be bad form. In these situations, the way an answer is given may have more actual meaning than what is being said. Therefore, visual information may be critical in many situations that in the Western world would not require it. Over 50% of H323 video was sold in Asia for this reason. In fact, the zone chart may look very different in this market.

mm-comms-3.gif

Finally, the Millenniums (or GenYers) entering the workforce may have a very different view of these needs than the more traditional Boomers who run companies and IT today. Many Millenniums are building their relationships using IM and audio conferencing in virtual games, without ever seeing a real image of their "friends". In fact, the virtual worlds such as Second Life are built around Avatars that enable you to be whomever you want. So will video be more or less valuable in the future?

After going through the above information with the CIO of a Fortune 100 company, his comment was that he finally understood why their video conferencing efforts had failed and where to focus now.

The open question is; when will video become so simple and in-expensive that the graph will change and video will become a true collaboration tool? Will virtual work teams with less relationship drive video into the collaboration space? While I think the answer to both is yes, the time is still a way into the future.

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  1. […] video phones, it still lacks the size and capability to meet the needs of the “selling” part of the Video Blog 2 from last year (Video Blog 1 was about how humans communicate). I believe the next big market in […]

    March 3rd, 2008 at 7:49 pm from Enterprise Technology » Blog Archive » VideoConferencing - Going Consumer?

Comments

  1. Vacation? What’s that?

    On a personal note, I know you are out in Central California during this firestorm and I hope this note finds you and yours safe. I know it must be stressful out there and the people of Southern California are in my thoughts.

    I am a bit confused by the analogies. I would think from an enterprise perspective the collaboration model would be built on a business meeting and perhaps even focused on a market vertical. To me the familial relationship would be one more appropriate for the consumer market. You then hop to the business model then to Gen Y which creates a certain cognitive dissonance for me :)

    Yes, grandma want to see the children, but do the children want to see her? Does grandma want to see the kids the way they are or how she woud like them to be?

    Please bear with me while I try to draw the thread all the way through from a business collaboration viewpoint. I will need to think more about the consumer market, because that market deals with (to me) a lot more complex and less critical interactions.

    I agree that the need for video subsides as parties get comfortable and begin to understand each other, however lately teams seem *very* dynamic and as members come and go or delegate the need seems to me to rise and fall rather than being a constantly falling curve.

    I also think that people tend to become super sensitive to cues and what is perceived as exasperation on a voice call may well be a distraction or exertion. As well different people are at different sensitivity levels in any group situation. My point being the more cues we have the more accurate and consistent the understanding.

    IMO video conferencing fell of because it was difficult to use and the presentation (slides etc.) really took precedence. I don’t think it is either or today though. I do remember sending someone a rather disgusting looking doughnut over video once though. To me, in a business communication we are all “selling” to a certain degree. We may be selling a certain design or architectural approach or perhaps the idea that testing is going to take a bit longer than everyone would like, but communicating your idea to an audience and getting their agreement is in reality selling.

    Your point about culture is bang on. It is critical in certain cases and helps reduce the feeling of distance and difference. To me, video reinforces the notion that we have much more in common than we have differences.

    The point about Second Life is very interesting to me. It brings presence, identity and social networking together. I have a family self, a business self, a financial self etc. all identities have different requirements for presence and different “social” circles. I can see where video would play in some but not others, but when I can *edit* video, replacing myself in with an avatar might be fun (shades of Roger Rabbit) :)

    Speaking of Identity, Presence and Selling, I am watching the report of the video conference (Political photo opportunity) between the White House and FEMA/California state officials regarding the fire storm in California.

    I agree it’s still in the future for both technical and social reasons.

    Addressing your aside from the previous entry, I cut my teeth on Usenet. What I learned there is that trying to control the direction of a discussion/blog is almost impossible. You can start a thread but the rest is a bit chaotic. Any event or mood of the posters can affect the discussion and moderation tends to close the dialog to the ultimate point of being useless.

    Personally, I prefer to let the discussion take its course and seize the opportunities as they present themselves. With a blog, ultimately you have the “bully pulpit” but you really can’t control where it goes after that and still maintain interest/relevance.

    October 24th, 2007 at 10:37 am by many

  2. I added the Grandma for completeness, obviously not a business item. It would seem there is a level of “trust” that parties develop. This is a level of relative frankness and willingness to comment/interact. What I was trying to get at is that this is driven by the task, culture, and generational comfort. Your point of the duration of teams is very important. If the team exists for a very short time, does the level of “trust” exist to a level where face-to-face/video becomes less important? The GenY/Milleniums comment was after observing the relationships that our children are building on-line without ever having a non-static view of the other person. Of course, YouTube shows that video is still an important medium.

    October 24th, 2007 at 11:57 am by Phil

  3. Phil, Yes. There are a whole lot of new technologies that hinge on a model of trust. This is something the younger folks have that [typically] I no longer have as much of. I know my grandmother was even more suspicious than I am :)

    I am optimistic that the younger folks will be able to keep a lot more of their trust than I have, but I fear like us, as they begin to have more to lose, will succumb to more suspicion.

    I agree with your apparent assertion that a trust does lessen the need for face-to-face in a one to one interaction. In a many to one or many to many I am not as sure, I feel as if there is a different reason for face to face; that is that face to face is additional way to promote common understanding among groups.

    October 24th, 2007 at 7:52 pm by many

  4. I appreciate the concern for my families safety in the time of such tragedy and upheaval. Luckily, the fires were well to the south and did not affect us.
    However, as we live “in the trees” so to speak, it made us more aware of the dangers and the need to be prepared. At least our roof is tile, not the wood Kindling one of our neighbors has…that is like roofing your house with kindling…they are quickly trying to replace it with non-combustible materials.
    Thanks again.
    It is an interesting thought that as trust dissipates, the need for higher levels of interactivity increases. I wonder how the ads showing how absurd some of the internet scams are in person would reflect. They show someone asking in person to do the things suggested in some of the phishing emails (take this check and cash it and then send me a check and keep the rest) and how illogical it sounds in person. It is also interesting we trust information that we get from the web, often without the necessary assurances of it;s authenticity….

    October 30th, 2007 at 5:32 pm by Phil

  5. Phil,

    I volunteer locally with my community. A good number of the people I volunteer with are somewhat unsophisticated as far as the internet goes. I asked them this; they don’t believe everything they see on TV or read in the newspaper, so why do things seem more credible in email? The answer is that email *seems* more personal and therefore they tend to trust it more implicitly.

    I see some folks trust breaking down. Unfortunately for some the notion that they were fooled is so embarrassing that they stop using the medium all togeather. Others take it in stride and chalk it up to experiance.

    As well, there is this notion that things on the web are what they seem to be, like a phone number thay look up or a letter they send. Most people don’t know that there is little to no verification that an address or web site is what it claims to be. Once that fact is known, there is an understanding and realization of that vunerability.

    October 31st, 2007 at 10:13 am by many

  6. I would think the first time someone clicked on a banner ad claiming to “protect your PC” and were offered some adult product their trust would fall.
    Even for those of us who are relatively sophisticated there are challenges trusting. I find myself often looking very closely at a URL that does not start with the companies base URL name to see if it is a phishing site. For example, instead of http://XYZ.com/registration, they use http://XYZregistration.com. I wish companies would do all their apps using only their base URL, which is much clearer. I realize this is done for better processing management, but it still makes it hard to tell the fish from the phishers.
    By the way, if anyone tried to link to the above links…they are just fakes…I think????

    November 1st, 2007 at 4:40 pm by Phil

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