1. Face to face meetings have eye contact, spatial orientation (sounds come from the direction of speakers), and non-verbal gestures (body movements) are visible.  The technology is reliable and easy to use. On the face of it telepresence would seem to be lacking the kind of personal warmth (or heat) of a face-to-face meeting.  Eye contact is difficult even though you can see eyes move on screen; in large screen versions, non-verbal communication might be possible, but not in smaller screen versions.  At the least, people’s expectations of a “business relationship” will change from personal contact to “telescreen” contact.  However, these tele-relationships might be perfect satisfactory for business purposes.
  2. Benefits predicted in the videos include strategic communications solution;  productivity gains; decreased time to market;  building stronger relationships with customers, suppliers, and partners; reduce geographical limitations; increases in the speed of decision making.
  3. Telepresence, like the Internet itself, strengthens the ability of firms both large and small to operate on a global scale efficiently, at low costs.  In fact small businesses may benefit relatively more from these technologies (at least the low-cost  variants) because they have so few alternatives.  Likewise, telepresence offers firms the possibility of organizing the firm on a much more decentralized basis.   This would mean putting  corporate headquarters in low cost regions.
  4. High-end telepresence is so good that minor variations in the multi-screen meetings can be annoying, and detract from the realism of the meeting.  This would be less true for Skype teleconference meetings.
  5. Telepresence would seem to off many marketing opportunities such as product demonstrations in remote locations; involving the customer in design meetings; and allowing customers to “meet” and discuss new products (a digital focus group).

     

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