War, disease drive up conferencing. Anecdotal evidence shows that multinational companies are turning more frequently to phone and video conferencing in light of the war in Iraq and the flulike disease in Asia. [CNET News.com]

I think this is just one more pair of forces driving us toward more synchronous (and eventually toward more asynchronous) e-Learning. It is also moving us toward more professional conferences taking place on line rather than at remote locations. I would look to see solutions such as blogging and peer-to-peer (eg, Groove) substituting for the social interactions that take place at conferences.

This still isn't an ideal or direct one-to-one substitution, though. Issues that will have to be resolved: payment for events, structure for participants, intellectual property and drm, vendor participation, bandwidth requirements (lots of people are going to be attending on dialup connections from home).

11:03:27 AM