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Most of my customers are located in a different city than the one I live and work in. You'd think videoconferencing would be perfect for someone like me. But n

Most of my customers are located in a different city than the one I live and work in. You'd think videoconferencing would be perfect for someone like me. But no, once or twice a month I rent a car and drive ~225km to meet with them personally. I supplement these in-person meetings with phone calls. I'm not sure I've ever had a videoconference call go perfectly smoothly, and I found that these kinds of calls added all sorts of invisible friction to the customer relationship. My goal as a service provider is to take problems away from my customer, not to add new ones or make them feel technically inept. My travel days are long and tiring, but most of my customers actually forget that I'm not local, which is exactly how I like it. This product looks interesting, and purports to solve some of the issues, but color me skeptical.

monk_e_boy 10y ago
Do you think a video wall would help? I often wonder if it is the size of the screen that makes people feel 'distant' when using video conferencing. Super high def full wall screen, so they can see every hair on your head with minimal lag -- I think this would work, the only thing they'd miss was a handshake.
- jason_pomerleau 10y ago
  I don't think the friction has anything to do with screen size. It's the never-ending technical issues. Oops, you're frozen. Dang, we lost the connection. There's a really bad echo, do you hear that? Bob can't connect. Etc. Besides, I'm not particularly handsome in HD. :-)
- iamatworknow 10y ago
  Why do members of an online conference need to be seen at all? What is the benefit of adding video instead of just using audio -- y'know, the medium by which actually information is exchanged?
  - ieatfood 10y ago
    Human beings happen to be tuned for face to face communication. They exchange a relatively low bandwidth but high importance information through facial gestures, eyebrows, eye contact, etcetera. As long as businesses relationships are still happening between such human beings, there will be a value placed on seeing each other's faces.
    - iamatworknow 10y ago
      Yeah, I get that. I'm sure there are benefits for a purely business-oriented meeting where people are guarding their cards and trying to make deals. But I've had to be on conferences with purely technical topics where people use cameras. There's barely even a reason for the call to begin with when specs and questions can just be sent via e-mail, so why do we need to see each other?

monk_e_boy 10y ago

Do you think a video wall would help? I often wonder if it is the size of the screen that makes people feel 'distant' when using video conferencing. Super high def full wall screen, so they can see every hair on your head with minimal lag -- I think this would work, the only thing they'd miss was a handshake.

jason_pomerleau 10y ago
I don't think the friction has anything to do with screen size. It's the never-ending technical issues. Oops, you're frozen. Dang, we lost the connection. There's a really bad echo, do you hear that? Bob can't connect. Etc. Besides, I'm not particularly handsome in HD. :-)
iamatworknow 10y ago
Why do members of an online conference need to be seen at all? What is the benefit of adding video instead of just using audio -- y'know, the medium by which actually information is exchanged?
- ieatfood 10y ago
  Human beings happen to be tuned for face to face communication. They exchange a relatively low bandwidth but high importance information through facial gestures, eyebrows, eye contact, etcetera. As long as businesses relationships are still happening between such human beings, there will be a value placed on seeing each other's faces.
  - iamatworknow 10y ago
    Yeah, I get that. I'm sure there are benefits for a purely business-oriented meeting where people are guarding their cards and trying to make deals. But I've had to be on conferences with purely technical topics where people use cameras. There's barely even a reason for the call to begin with when specs and questions can just be sent via e-mail, so why do we need to see each other?