Its before Christmas and I have a crazy schedule, 5 countries (8 destinations) in 6 days and its not off to the best start. My Thai air flight from Copenhagen to Bangkok was delayed for more than 3 hours due to technical reasons. Due to that I missed my connecting flight to Manila and was out on a Kuwait airlines flight, 5 hours later. One thing I notice is the paranoia in boarding the Kuwait air flight, despite the normal security check in the airport they require manual security check before entering the aircraft and double check on passport and identity… If not for a meeting I am about to miss I would have taken the Thai air flight later in the afternoon….
While in the air my attention turned in to the need for meeting face to face. Is it really needed? Why? Can't our advancement in telecommunications bridge the gap for the need for physical air travel? More than 20 years ago while at the university I have written a paper about holographic communications eliminating the need to travel vast distances for meetings. Today's technology allows us to be visually present remotely, this enable us to deliver presentation and conduct meetings across thousand of miles in real time. Mind you I value customer contact and interaction a lot. I actually think that 50% of a company executive's time should be spent with a customer while sales managers should be at 90%. The question here lies whether there is a need to travel or not. Some face to face meetings can not be replaced with today's telecommunication technologies, especially meetings with customers, however tomorrow's technologies will make it easier to be omnipresent. The beauty of being virtually present is that we can be more productive, more customer meetings in a day in various countries across multiple time zones.
Now, how does your telecommunication experience affect the need for physically traveling to meet your customers? Do bad internet connection cost you travel time and money?
Written on the 21st of December 2012, some say its the end of the world... 22nd came and the world is still here...
While in the air my attention turned in to the need for meeting face to face. Is it really needed? Why? Can't our advancement in telecommunications bridge the gap for the need for physical air travel? More than 20 years ago while at the university I have written a paper about holographic communications eliminating the need to travel vast distances for meetings. Today's technology allows us to be visually present remotely, this enable us to deliver presentation and conduct meetings across thousand of miles in real time. Mind you I value customer contact and interaction a lot. I actually think that 50% of a company executive's time should be spent with a customer while sales managers should be at 90%. The question here lies whether there is a need to travel or not. Some face to face meetings can not be replaced with today's telecommunication technologies, especially meetings with customers, however tomorrow's technologies will make it easier to be omnipresent. The beauty of being virtually present is that we can be more productive, more customer meetings in a day in various countries across multiple time zones.
Now, how does your telecommunication experience affect the need for physically traveling to meet your customers? Do bad internet connection cost you travel time and money?
Written on the 21st of December 2012, some say its the end of the world... 22nd came and the world is still here...
