Enterprise Technology By Phil Edholm

On Turkish Air....from Istanbul to Chicago - returning from A CIO Forum in Istanbul

As I once again sit on an airplane for another 20 hours portal to portal (before beginning my work day back in California) , I am reminded of the promise of communications technology to reduce travel. In fact, somewhere over the Atlantic (or maybe it was Canada), new words to the old Animals tune ..."we gotta get out of this place"... started running through my head. As an aside, there is no intended political commentary here, in this context, it is just a song.

In many ways this is not a profound message, but rather a reflection on the current state of business affairs where traveling 2-5 thousand miles for a relatively brief meeting is considered commonplace and normal.

I am trying to use more video for interactions, but there always seems to be great resistance to the concept. As to why I was in Turkey, I tried valiantly to suggest video for this CIO Conference the week after Thanksgiving, but was unsuccessful in convincing the local team that it would be "really really" good. So I flew there to do 2 hour long presentations and a number of one on one meetings. The feedback was excellent, but I fear I may have only succeeded in getting more requests to fly somewhere new.

And then I am reminded of the time I did a high profile video conference to a major customer in the mid-west. It was an 8 AM meeting on a Friday and would have required 8-10 hours of flying both ways to get there and the timing was such that I was going to go for only that single one hour meeting. Finally I put my foot down and said that I would only do it by video conference. So, using MCS, I set up for the video, starting at 5:15 in my home office (I am on Pacific time so the meeting started at 6 AM). As I was setting up I realized the light reflecting off the picture above my desk was creating a glare (I am follicularly challenged as you can see from my photo). So, I stood up on my desk chair to unscrew one of the three bulbs in the ceiling fixture (the one creating the reflection). As I was standing on the chair, through my headset laying on the desk I heard; "nice legs"... of course, I had just put on a dress shirt and a sport coat and was wearing my gym shorts (it was 5:15 AM after all).

Putting this aside, the meeting went very well. The senior person from the customer commented later; "I was surprised how effective the session was".

So from all of this, I have some learnings and a question;

When doing videos, either wear pants or never stand up.....I was teased about that incident for a a year.

With some skill/training, video meetings can be incredibly effective, especially where it is information transfer. And the customers can be very receptive.

So then, is the issue with us, the presenter, not the receivers. Do we just need to insist that more of the time a telecommunications meeting is the right way to go.

I know it would be better for me, for my family, and for my carbon factors as well.........

So, I think my New Years resolution will be to reduce my travel by at least 33% for 2008. Better eating, more exercise, and of course, fewer blog posts written on airplanes....