Face of Business

In a time gone by, business meetings were conducted face-to-face. Training classes were both taught and attended in person, and telephone conversations happened between only two people. This is not so today! Over the last few decades, technology has dramatically changed the way that business is conducted. Today, seminars have become Webinars, and face to face meeting are increasingly being replaced with a phenomenon known as the video conference. Everyone from the mightiest corporations to the tiniest small businesses (not to mention families, churches, and other groups) has been able to use this technology to accomplish some once unheard of feats. Meetings from boardrooms across the globe can now seamlessly blend into one room, without a single flight being made.

For businesses, the advantages of the video conference are huge. They do not only need to be used for international meetings, but are commonly used for regional meetings and training sessions as well. By simply using a camera (which may be as simple and inexpensive as a webcam), a microphone, a computer, the right software, and a high-speed Internet connection, the conference can be up and running. Employees who otherwise would have wasted an hour or two in the car (each way) can now work a full morning before a noontime meeting. Travel which otherwise would have required overnight stays can be completely negated, adding untold thousands to the bottom line of major corporations. Another popular use of video conferencing is in telecommuting, or the increasingly common practice of employees working from home. A simple video chat, as it is sometimes called, allows face-to-face communication with the boss, and an at-home employee can join a meeting happening at the office, for example.

Large corporations are not the only ones taking advantage of being able to do a video conference. Small businesses and families can use more simple applications to accomplish the same task. By adding video and audio feed to chats happening using messaging services such as Yahoo Messenger or Windows Live Messenger, what once was simply an instant message conversation can now be a video chat. Then there is the ever-popular and easy to use Skype service, which is completely free and allows conversations from all over the world. Military families, as well as parents with children living long distances away, are known to be frequent users of these services. These services are less expensive than a phone call (free, in fact) and also have more of a personal touch.