The art of online communication
Thanks to Barry Sampson for finding this fun and informative video from Sacha Chua, in which she shares her seven tips for great online presentations:
In his post Dead Air Dynamics, David Goad talks about the extreme discomfort that DJs feel when it all goes quiet and there’s no banter or music. In their occupation it’s a no-no. He relates this experience to business meetings, including those held online, and notes that dead air is most likely to be encountered at the start of the meeting, when the facilitator/chair is waiting for everyone to turn up.
Here in the UK the snow continues to fall, and yet another face to face meeting is cancelled. I had a quick chat with the other person involved and we’ve now arranged to hold the meeting at the same time as originally planned, but via Skype. Simple.
So why didn’t we just do that in the first place?
As someone professionally involved in virtual communication and collaboration, I regularly look for oportunities to do things online rather than in person, and yet it surprised me how many times in the past year I’d met with people face to face when maybe it could have happened virtually.
I think we tend to assume that certain types of meeting and event should happen in person, and as a result we don’t consider all the options.
Going forward I’ve resolved that for myself, virtual options will be the first I consider. That doesn’t mean I don’t intend to do anything in person (far from it), but where the inconvenience of travel, time and location outweigh the benefits of meeting in person I think it’s right to question doing it any other way.
What I’d really like to know is what you think.
Are there any particular circumstances when we shouldn’t even consider doing things virtually? I’m thinking about this in the context of meetings, interviews, training activites, conferences and any other event where the default behaviour is to do it face to face.
Similarly I’m thinking of the whole range of virtual solutions from VoIP to Telepresence, whatever is appropriate.
So why don’t we just consider doing things virtually as the first option?
I remember the Wimbledon men’s singles final of 1967. John Newcombe won. It was one of the most comprehensive thrashings of all time. But it was not the beating of Wilhelm Bungert that made the match so memorable. It was the very first time I watched television in colour.
Now I see that 2010 is to be the year of colour. There is a not-so-quiet revolution going on in the world of digital publishing, and it’s all centred upon the eReader. Just in case you’ve been in a subterranean cavern for the last couple of years, I’ll just explain that an eReader is a piece of hardware that lets you read books that have been digitised so you can view them through a screen.
Screen technology has evolved. The web-pages are all aquiver with the excitement and new words such as electrowetting, transmissive, reflective and transflective abound. Cutting through the technobabble I came at last to realise that these new screens can display video, text and photographs, in full colour, in less than favourable light conditions, and they can do it much better than they could in the past.
Of course colour TV in the UK was brought to us by the only 600 lb gorilla in the jungle at that time – The BBC. Now that most fearsome protagonist Apple is stirring up the overcrowded eReader market, and book publishers are expressing concern.
Will the new iSlate device, or the high end readers developed by Mirasol, Liquavista and Pixel Qi enjoy greater commercial success than Amazon’s Kindle? Will Apple transform and dominate the market for electronic print in the same way as it did with electronic music?
Much depends upon how relaxed and inclusive they will be about the management of digital rights. We’ll have to wait and see, but maybe for not too long.
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