Alliance Online - September 2007

High touch or high tech? Getting the balance right

Gavin Clabaugh

I know what you want. You’d like me to pull a technological rabbit out of my hat – an easy solution to the problem with air travel. Unfortunately, there isn’t one. No rabbits here. None of today’s technologies are full-on replacements for travel. They’ll never replace that je ne sais quoi one gets with a face-to-face meeting, and they’re never, ever likely to replace the serendipity of a conference as typified by that unexpected introduction in a hallway or the ‘eureka’ experience of plans hatched on the back of a napkin.

However, there are alternatives – many you’ve probably heard of before: web-based meeting systems like WebEx or Meeting Place, collaborative workspaces like SharePoint or Groove, simple document-sharing like Google’s ‘Docs and Spreadsheets’, audio teleconferencing and video teleconferencing, or even so-called ‘virtual reality’ systems like Second Life.

When the flesh is weak or the schedule too insane, the ease, convenience and price of the high-tech alternatives overshadow their high-touch limitations. Moreover, considering the other costs – wear and tear on both you and the environment – they’re a real bargain. In truth, these new communications tools can reasonably substitute for marginal travel. They’re cheap (relatively), easy-to-use (relatively) and increasingly ubiquitous (relatively). All these tools share one common feature. They allow you to share things – your face, your documents, your (spoken or written) thoughts – via the internet, with anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Audio conferencing – a real bargain

First, use audio conferencing – I know it’s mundane, but it works. Half, if not more, of most board meetings or other meetings where the participants already know one another can be done using simple multi-party conference calls. Note the emphasis on the participants knowing one another. Most of these technologies are downright lousy at beginning a conversation. They’re just not high-touch enough. But, they’re more than adequate for continuing a conversation. A real bargain, Skype, allows Skype-to-Skype calls of up to ten participants for no cost.

The limitations of video conferencing …

Second, one-to-one video conferencing has truly come of age. It’s not quite like being there, but it’s better than a phone call. Moreover, it’s cheap. For the paltry investment of $130 for a high-quality web camera, the 1960s video-phone is finally here (just 50 years late). If you’re not using it, now’s the time to try. Note that I only mention one-to-one video. It’s a sad truth that the larger the group, the worse the experience. Video conferencing simply doesn’t scale well. Skype, for example, won’t do more than two on a video call, and while there are others that will, the experience suffers.

Moreover, scaling larger – more people or more locations – costs. You need the right equipment and the right connections. Even then, to connect to more than one or two locations usually requires the use of an external service called a video bridge. And, while the costs are nothing compared to what they used to be, or compared to travel itself, they are nevertheless substantial. Basic equipment costing several thousand dollars and bridging can cost over $300 per hour, per location.

But you should consider video conferencing for speakers and presenters. For most of them, the ‘hall-way experience’ is irrelevant. Often they don’t really need to be there. It would be just as good, maybe better, if they only made a video appearance. Most are just talking heads and a PowerPoint anyway. Today’s video conferencing systems are more than capable of providing 45 minutes of a podium and the requisite 15 minutes of Q&A. Here, one-to-many video would be just the ticket. For large conferences especially, like the Council on Foundation’s annual meeting, it would save the presenters’ time, overall costs, and definitely a dozen or so plane flights.

… and the liberation of telecommuting

Rather than try to live with the limitations of teleconferencing, embrace the liberation of telecommuting. Accessing your office remotely, and keeping up on projects, email and other deadlines can easily be done with today’s tools. So piggy-back the meetings and conferences together, then use existing and proven technologies to manage the time away from the office. By simply clumping meetings and conferences together, one could easily winnow down dozens of trips to just three or four, especially with some creative use of available shared calendar and scheduling systems. All these tools are already fairly mature and commonplace.

Technology is not the answer

Finally, all of these tools are most useful for marginal travel. We must learn to think twice about booking yet another day trip for a two-hour meeting. Perhaps a telephone call or a simple one-to-one video call would suffice. We might even find it more productive once the various vicissitudes of travel are eliminated.

Technology is not the answer – unless it’s a new type of jet engine – but it is an answer. Today’s high-tech options can be used, easily and inexpensively, for those non-essential journeys. If it comes down to a choice between a marginal day trip or another tonne or two of carbon in the biosphere, a web meeting or a video call is a better choice.

As my colleague John Naisbitt observed many years ago, there is an essential balance between the ‘high tech’ and the ‘high touch’, and that high touch still requires a train, a bus, a plane, or a drive in the country to get to that handshake in the hall or that napkin in a bar. The trick is figuring out when the high-touch is required and when the high-tech will do.

Gavin T Clabaugh is Vice President – Information Services at the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. Email GClabaugh@mott.org

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