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Virtual meetings and teleconferences -- the Internet and the telephone
By Gillian Kerr, Ph.D., C.Psych.

Some of our favourite questions that we ask organizations when we're assessing their needs for technology are, "What wastes your time? What do you hate doing? What takes you too long to do?" Their top-ten time-wasters usually include scheduling meetings or going to meetings. Meetings are especially costly for agencies that serve large geographical areas, or that participate in inter-agency projects.

We have been experimenting with ways that agencies can cut down on meeting and communication costs without becoming less accessible to their communities. One promising approach is the emerging integration between the telephone system and the Internet, and the use of virtual meetings.

Lots of people think that virtual or electronic meetings just involve email or discussion groups. In fact, the telephone system is an extraordinarily complex technological marvel that is getting more flexible all the time. Good Enough Information Systems, as a completely virtual company, uses the phone for serious conversations, team meetings and brainstorming. We also use email, instant messaging and other technologies, but phone calls give a feeling of immediacy and personal connection that most people don't get through computers. In fact, research on virtual meetings rates telephone calls as being more intimate than videoconferencing.

Here are some ideas and resources for you to consider:

Teleconferences are real time-savers for any group over three people who work in different locations. Here are some of the ways you could use them:

Volunteer committees and work groups: It's getting tougher to recruit good volunteers, and agencies are finding that they need to be more efficient of their volunteer's time. Some volunteers want the face-to-face contact with their peers, and others would prefer task-focused meetings on the phone. It's a good idea to have occasional physical meetings to satisfy the needs of the people who require ‘meat time' and to use telecons as much as possible for task groups.

Support groups for clients and community members: Youth and seniors are often unable to use cars, and if they don't have access to good public transportation, it's hard to serve them. For example, AIDS support groups for teenagers in rural areas are almost impossible because of the difficulty a gay teenager would face in explaining to parents why he needs the car. Battered women, isolated seniors, people with anxiety disorders all face barriers to getting to a central agency location. Teleconferences are now inexpensive enough to offer to support groups.

Training and conferences, especially when supported by shared web browsing or web-based presentations.

Working with remote staff and telecommuters, including employees with some forms of disabilities or illness.

We suggest several different teleconferencing services, depending on your needs and your patience.

Telebridge provides conferencing for up to 30 people for $10 US/hour, and up to 150 people for $15 US/hour. Your participants must make a long distance call to the central location.

Telebridge also offers a monthly leased line for $150 US/month. Using this option, your agency could provide toll-free calls to participants at 6.5 cents/minute -- less than $4/hour per person. This would be a great resource for a funder to offer an entire group of agencies, or for a province-wide agency to offer its staff and volunteers. We'd love to set this up for a group of agencies and experiment with phone-based support groups as an alternative or supplement to distress lines.

Webex offers web-based meetings, which means that groups can share documents and look at presentations on the computer while they interact using the telephone. Simple Webex meetings are free for up to four people; for more people or more complex abilities (shared web browsing and software programs) you should use Webex through one of its partners, Done.com. Through Done.com, you can set up an unlimited number of 90 minute teleconferences with full web sharing for $50 US/month plus long distance charges to California. Warning: Done.com is poorly designed, and you will probably need help to set it up for your agency. Given the high death rate of Internet companies these days, Done.com might be gone by the time you read this, but Webex seems pretty stable.

Firetalk is a free instant messaging client with some impressive abilities. If your group installs it on their computers, they can have voice teleconferences over the Internet with up to seven people, and share web browsing. The voice quality isn't perfect, though you can improve it by paying subscribing to their higher-quality protocol and having high-speed Internet access.

Cheap long distance phone calls. Most teleconference services charge a bundle for long distance rates. A good way to make virtual meetings cheaper is to combine Telebridge or Webex with cheap toll-free lines.

Agencies should generally make more use of long distance phone calls. Canada is a huge country with a small population. The voluntary sector needs to build and use its networks if it's going to challenge the financial and political pressures on its survival. Agencies outside the major urban centres are often isolated from their colleagues around the country, and the telephone is a great tool for building relationships. Some long distance services are using Internet switching and VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) to cut costs for long distance calls, and you will see falling prices over the next couple of years. Right now, you can get long distance phone rates of 8 cents/minute or under for any call to the U.S. or Canada. See our ‘Featured Services' for more detail.

It takes some experimentation and patience to get used to using teleconferences instead of physical meetings. Many organizations give up almost immediately, and continue spending unnecessary time and money traveling to meetings, or continue expecting their clients and volunteers to travel to them. If you're willing to try out these approaches, and assign a group of internal enthusiasts to play with them, you'll find that phone meetings become an essential part of your communications, along with email and face-to-face meetings.
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Gillian Kerr, Ph.D., C.Psych.

President, RealWorld Systems

gkerr at realworldsystems.net
Read my weblog at http://blog.realworldsystems.net

Disclosure: We have affiliate relationships with some of the services we describe in our columns, but we do not recommend or review services based on their affiliate programs.