Technology at work

So last week my team at work achieved a huge technological breakthrough with our videoconferencing / teleconferencing options. It was simply brilliant! While we have all been using Teleconferencing and Videoconferencing and Netmeeting and other Screensharing options, each with its own share of benefits, never before in my experience had such a huge team met over a brainstorming session spread across so many locations. So we had 13 team members from 7 different locations spread across the globe - London, Dusseldorf, Paris, Spain, New York, New Jersey, Atlanta.

There were 6 of us in the conference room in New York. Our Videoconferencing facility in New York had 3 projector screens. So on one of the projector screens, we had a split screen and couple of our team members from Dusseldorf and London were projected on the split screen. On the other screen, we projected the document that we were all gonna talk about. Now this is the interesting part! One of our fellow team members joining from Spain was working from his hotel room, and of course he did not have any video conferencing facility in the hotel. He put his webcam on, shared his screen with the rest of the team using a screen sharing option and all of us viewed him on the other projector. The remaining team members were not on Videoconference, we could just hear them through the teleconference.

It was a richly rewarding experience and there was a free exchange of thoughts throughout the session. And we could easily interact with different participants located in different parts of the globe, without incurring travel expenses or other expenses associated with face to face communication. Technology has indeed come a long way!