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"Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all. How do we define this lively darting about with words, of hitting them back and forth, this sort of brief smile of ideas which should be conversation?" ~ Guy de Maupassant ~

 Friday, November 21, 2003
Web-conferencing and online collaboration tools

I've been talking to Robin Good.  And i've been learning so much. 

Robin's definitely a change agent, promoting better understanding of technology for better and more effective communication. He's developed an Official Guide to best Web Conferencing and Live Presentation Tools.  Its a terrific resource - well-documented and very comprehensive.  Useful for anyone who uses or wishes to use online collaboration software.  Whether individual or groups, whether SOHO or enterprise markets.  Thanks Robin for sharing it with me - i learnt so much studying it.  I did a search for other such resources - and came up with just one that comes close - Thinkofit.

Robin interviewed me as part of his series on the future of online collaboration.  Here's the full interview with his comments (highly flattering :):):))and a full transcript - i loved answering this question in particular :

Robin Good: Can you describe your ideal dream conferencing/collaboration system in its main characteristics?

Dina Mehta: Hmmm - I'd like a work space like Groove - its synchronous and asynchronous, its clean and easy to navigate even for a non-techie - with most of its tools like Browser, Picture Chat pane, Discussion, Document review, Messaging, Meetings, Notepad etc. But need much better voice - something like Skype - and video conferencing facilities - that would be terrific.

Additional goodies would be a blog or wiki like application - where the conferencing system can actually move into a more collaboratory mode - with threaded discussions and a space that encourages brainstorming issues, new product innovations or any other 'task at hand' that requires a group of people to work together within a community or simply in a more collective environment.

It was neat to actually think about my online communication and collaboration habits.  I use the word habit - because its something i've been doing for a while now - and haven't really sat back and contemplated or evaluated consciously much before. 

Late last evening, Robin introduced me to Voxwire - and we experimented some with it.  The voice is really good there - crystal clear and with no time-lag whatsoever.   Just found it a bit tedious to have to press the control key each time i had to hand over voice to Robin.  Perhaps a feature more useful when there are more than 2 persons conferencing.  There's a nice text messaging window pane too, and we could navigate and browse sites together.  We got to the video part when i realised it was late - and family was calling.  Hope to experiment some more with you Robin.    

I've also been experimenting with Glance - another web-conferencing space.  I love the concept of screen-sharing. I've tried it just once yet - and it was a little slow - perhaps a server problem or high traffic.   Too early yet for any conclusive comment. 


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