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How To Get the Most From a Collaborative Work Environment
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Business New Haven
11/11/2002
By: Nancy Barnes
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A recent advertisement showing a businessman carrying a picket sign makes the point: 'collaborate or die,' the slogan on the sign dramatically reads. Whether reviewing financial statements, scanning marketing reports or utilizing training materials, businesspersons need to work together-even if employees and/or their clients are far apart.
Advances in audiovisual technology have vastly improved the flexibility of collaborative work environments. Employees can work together from boardrooms, from conference rooms or, at the end of a long day on the road, from the privacy of a hotel.
The following are among the tools that keep today's technology-savvy businessperson at the top of his game:
1. Post 9/11, companies cut back dramatically on air travel, and telephone companies reported a surge in requests for videoconferencing hook-ups. Videoconferencing permits shared audio and visual material between two persons or from one person to a few, if a split monitor is used.
2. Want to swell the audience for the next address by the chief executive officer or offer a Webcast of the company's next quarterly report? Digital streaming is ideal for such occasions, because it brings audio and visual material from one source to many. Text messaging, live chat and even polling options permit viewers to have input into the presentation if the broadcast is live.
In addition, many companies, especially those who provide in-house training, use digital streaming to create on-demand libraries. Rather than produce multiple copies of VHS tapes of employee training sessions, the organization can simply give its employees a URL address. Each employee can then access the material through his or her computer, even if that businessperson is in a hotel room at the end of a long, trying day.
3. For business needs that do not require interaction that, literally, span the globe, digital messaging, a kind of signage which uses animation to take the place of static banners or posters, may satisfy a company and get the job done. Large monitors in the lobbies of corporate headquarters can remind employees that a product with an impressive array of attributes is scheduled for release, or than an important corporate occasion is forthcoming.
4. Far removed from whitecaps and the surfing that flourishes among them, whiteboarding has become the high-tech equivalent of the pencil and white pad. Once flung against an easel, the white pad was key for businessmen making presentations. With an image from a computer projected onto a board, today's interactive whiteboards have become tools for a myriad of business occasions. Schools use them, and sports analysts such as television commentator John Madden have relied on them for diagramming the almighty football play. Now businesspersons "whiteboard" when giving presentations, holding training sessions and even brainstorming, since SMART Pens permit persons to write notes on whiteboards, draw diagrams and illustrate their ideas.
What businessmen find especially valuable is that information gathered on a white board can be "captured," that is to say, downloaded, printed or sent out as e-mails. For any businessperson who winces at the thought of one more session with ten persons crowded around a small laptop, whiteboards - either portable, as floor models on wheels, or hung from walls - posses an undeniable cachet.
5. Anyone who thinks projectors have not changed ought to think again. Projectors are no longer unreliable, heavy, and like the Model-T Ford, available only in basic black. Today's projectors, which weigh as little as three or four pounds, emphasize portability. With the computer and the screen, they remain the bedrock of today's audiovisual technology. And they are user friendly. Plug-and-play is the projector's byword, now.
6. What has made the thin, space-saving screens onto which computers project their visual data possible is a technology culled from plasma. Plasma is an array of cells known as pixels, which are composed of three subpixels that correspond to the colors red, green and blue. Plasmavision, as the technology is frequently known, produces colored light controlled by advanced electronics to create more than 16 million different colors. This allows for easily viewable images on a large display screen that can be a mere 3.3 inches in depth.
The good news for the small- and mid-sized company which, with clients and partners, strive for mutual goals is that such tools are no longer only for the large company whose pockets are deep. Videoconferencing, which once cost no less than $20,000 to $40,000, can now be purchased for $10,000. And a projector that a businessperson can use while traveling costs as little as $1,500. Working together is indeed possible even if the collaborators are far apart.
The industry group that can ensure the credibility of its worldwide sales professionals' and also offers training and technical support is the Industrial Communications Industries Association. Its Web site is www.icia.org.
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