subject: Collaborating Globally In The Twenty-first Century [print this page] In these days of rising costs, when expense accounts are evaporating and business travel is being curtailed, professionals of all disciplines are turning more and more to technology as the answer to their collaboration needs. The twenty-first century offers a variety of tools for long distance, and indeed world wide, collaboration.
Of course, there is email, but email is only the beginning. There are many times when real time conferencing is needed, and there are a plethora of options for real time collaboration. Many social networking platforms offer group chat via text. There are also options for sharing documents among a team, and these options allow for team members to edit in real time. Gone are the days of forwarding a document to members of a team, waiting for the document to be returned, and then having someone collate the edits, only to send the project out for review again, and again. In the twenty first century, collaboration moves much faster.
Sharing documents, editing them real time, and text chatting is indeed a formidable advance over options available a decade ago, but there are times when even this is not enough to meet modern collaboration needs. Sometimes a face to face is required, and then a geographically scattered team will need to consider audio visual solutions. Fortunately, audio visual solutions are readily available.
A decade ago, if a team in Pune, India, needed face to face collaboration with their global counterparts elsewhere, the team would need to find a facility able to provide a video conference room Pune. Additionally, the facility would need to be able to provide AV rentals Pune. Even in large cities like Pune, the ninth largest in India, such facilities would have been rare and, more importantly, expensive. Many large corporations have the resources to dedicate space, equipment, and personnel to the specialized and expensive video conferencing of the day. These luxuries were, however, far beyond the reach of the average entrepreneur, aid worker, artist, or student, all of whom could benefit from real time video conferencing applications.
Today, anyone with a laptop or smartphone and an Internet connection can take advantage of audio visual solutions. Collaboration can happen via technology as simple as video internet phone calls, but this is only the beginning. Applications exist, many of them are free, that combine video chat with an online white board, document sharing and more. Collaboration is not limited to two people, either. Free applications exist allowing as many as ten people to join the conference at one time. If more than ten need to collaborate at once, paid applications exist to handle the load. Imagine a writer in Pune, India; her illustrator in Amsterdam, The Netherlands; an editor in New York, USA; a publicist in Paris, France, all sitting down together to brainstorm the current project, hearing each other's laughter, seeing each other's smiles. There truly is no limit; geography need never again be a barrier to the meeting of minds.
by: Milconsys
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