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Joe Schurman

Swine Flu + Recession = Microsoft Office Live Meeting

By jschurman on Thu, 04/30/09 - 1:15pm.

With budgets strapped tight and a widespread fear of an integrated pig cold, this should be an extreme wake-up call to organizations across the globe. We can no longer, from a training, marketing, or meeting perspective, require human beings to travel. This process of flying in for meetings, in my mind, has become so antiquated anyway, that we have to be smarter in how we present and meet in a virtual environment. When I mean smarter, I mean really putting some time into fixing audio and video quality issues, providing intelligent meeting lobbies, and creating an interactive and post-session on-demand experience. We, as a human race, have now conquered the art of multi-tasking and while we appear to have completed more work, our attention spans are that of my seven year-old. Keeping sessions exciting and functional is extremely important as if we are truly going to compete with face to face, in-person interaction, the virtual experience has to triumph with HD quality video, faster frame rates, integrated telephony and VoIP audio that moves with the video unlike the Chinese/English movie experience, and data that is vibrant, to the point, and downloadable, and a recording feature to promote on-demand service.

So far, Microsoft Office Live Meeting provides this functionality, with the only problem being that there is no current ability for non-Windows users to schedule or present during Live Meeting sessions. The main problem, and this goes for WebEx and Live Meeting, is that we have to start promoting this interaction and stop defaulting to "old school", in-person required meetings and events. I don't recall any in-person meetings in Star Wars, do you? So, why, when we have the technology now, do we not promote this ability?

Nobody in today's age appreciates a Time Vampire!

I'm interested in seeing some responses here to ensure I'm not the only person who feels this way.

For more info on how freaking cool Microsoft Office Live Meeting is, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/livemeeting.

-Joe

About Joe Schurman: Microsoft Voice and UC
Joe has provided consulting and research within the Information Technology industry for the past 17 years and is considered to be one of the worlds top experts on Unified Communications technologies. Joe has been quoted, interviewed, and published in international press including Wall Street Journal, CNBC, MSN Money, and through international webcasts, industry events, and hundreds of speaking engagements in every continent. Joe has published three books, including the technology best seller, “Microsoft Voice and Unified Communications”, published by Pearson / Addison Wesley in 2009 with a foreword by Gurdeep Singh Pall, Vice President of Microsoft Corporation and XD Huang, Microsoft Research Director of the Communications Innovation Center. Joe is a Microsoft TechNet Gold Presenter Award winner and is a leader in the Microsoft technical community as well as a 6-time Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional). Joe has been recently featured in several TV and Radio Media interviews including NBC's "World According to Garf” NBC Radio Broadcast, The Business Maker's Show on NBC with Russ Capper, and The Today in America Show with host Terry Bradshaw on CNN, Discovery Channel, and Fox News. Joe began his career at Compaq Computer Corporation and became the youngest Managing Consultant at Accenture in 2001 after which time, Joe became a private consultant to Microsoft for 8 years with 2 1/2 years spent with Microsoft Research. Joe resides in Houston, Texas with his wife and three children and is a member of the Holland Society and the National Sons of the American Revolution.
 

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