Desktop videoconferencing
Desktop videoconferencingDesktop Videoconferencing is gaining acceptance as a key telecommunications technology in the work place all around the world. Desktop Videoconferencing makes communication far more effective when its impossible for people to meet in person. Not only do people get a feel of what takes place in a face to face meeting but they also get to hear what others are saying and their reactions as well when using Desktop Videoconferencing technology. And unlike a telephone conference calls, Desktop Videoconferencing enables users to dramatize presentations with visual aids, such as whiteboarding, as well as viewing colorful graphs, charts and spreadsheets.
By combining Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) technology and individual PCs, people can meet "face-to-face" without leaving their offices. It's a unique way to reduce costly and time-consuming travel. It also allows employees to meet "face-to-face" over a desktop PC and share and review documents with colleagues, clients or vendors. You can hold a Desktop Videoconference whenever the need arises, without the time and expense of traveling-or even leaving your desk because it's just like being there in person. Desktop Videoconferencing in no way takes the place of face to face, but it does offer the convenience of a different means of communication.
Videoconferencing is a type of conferencing in which video cameras and microphones capture sight and sound for transmission over a communications network. Videoconferencing makes it possible to conduct meetings with participation of groups who are hundreds and thousands of miles apart (Senn, 1998).
As Joseph Jesson an information technology consultant at Amoco in Chicago put it the notion of Desktop Videoconferencing was highlighted at the 1964 Worlds Fair in New York. It is now 1999 and the promises of upgraded desktop videoconferencing are still on the rise. In the year of 2000 there will still be promises of desktop videoconferencing upgrades as it has been with computers. As Videoconferencing has made it to Desktop Videoconferencing it has continued to improve and to grow slowly but surely. Slowly because Videoconferencing has been used in a large conference room sized environment over the past decade and the cost were outrageous, putting a damper in its growth rate.
The failure of early videoconferencing systems was not not only technological or economic in nature, but a failure to understand and to take into account the sociological and psychological factors involved in the deployment and diffusion of this technology. The pioneers in the field had conceptualized videoconferencing as a direct replacement for face-to-face meetings or encounters (Egido, 1988,16). In terms of the corporate bottom line it was anticipated that videoconferencing could replace to some extent both long distance travel and commuter travel. The result would be a direct saving of time, money and energy. Reality, however, was more complex than this simple equation could explain. The recognition of the importance of factors such as corporate culture, the nature of the work group, and work practices...
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