First, a little disclaimer: No matter how you divide your conferencing solutions, the categories you use to group them are mutable and subject to instant review. Combinations of various elements make some apps basically impossible to categorize. Depending on how you look at it, mailing lists are even a form of conferencing, just like email. Real time versus asynchronous is even blurring as text, audio, and video are merged together in various combinations.
With that said and out of the way, let’s look at some of the ways conferencing solutions are classified.
1. Conferences in real time. Real-time conferencing refers to synchronous communications, so that participants are present virtually at the same time and can actively interact as if they were physically located in the same place. Some typical and common applications are instant messaging and interactive chat, participatory webinars, interactive webcasting, interactive online teleseminars.
Now these are mostly web based, however the conference call of yesteryear is still widely used. Call-in teleseminars are also common. Today, however, they are being merged with web applications as VoIP services with gateways to landline phone systems become widely available.
2. Video conferencing is generally considered separately because it is an activity that requires much more bandwidth. To achieve reasonably acceptable simultaneous live audio and video, you need significant bandwidth. And the more active participants are involved, the more serious the problem becomes. Internet chat services with webcams are a fairly simple form of video conferencing that is quite popular for individual person-to-person links, but clearly not of high enough quality to use for commercial purposes or for larger groups. Some video conferences are one-way video with interactive audio. Others require high-speed networks or dedicated connections. High-end solutions can work well for large corporations because of the savings from reduced travel costs and time lost from productive work.
3. Forums, message boards, bulletin boards, etc. These are asynchronous forms of conferences or discussion solutions. Even blogs and wikis can sometimes fall into this category. Typically, these are linear or chained hangouts, focused on one topic, with chronologically labeled sequential entries that make up a discussion. Some prefer the linear mode for being easier to use and follow, while others insist that tree structures often have more scope and the ability to develop subtopics integrated into the main topic. Whatever one’s preference, these are excellent solutions given the evolving nature of the Internet and the need for participation by people in time zones spread across the globe. Real-time communications can be a burden when day/night cycles are offset in large numbers. Forums, with their purpose-focused approach, can develop large, dedicated communities that can be an extremely valuable source of knowledge and experience.
4. Collaborative work environments in teams or in groups. These types of solutions can also include online virtual classrooms in various forms. The most sophisticated of these solutions include real-time and asynchronous modes with integrated audio, video, messaging, and conferencing. While some of this software is used on the Internet (again, some collaborative workspaces based on blogging platforms have been developed and even forum software is sometimes used in this way), the more resource-intensive versions generally they are used in dedicated networks and intranets with high bandwidth. Many of these applications are more geared towards internal corporate uses.
So you suppose this covers it all? Those four areas alone reflect a huge growth in the modalities available for conferences and meetings just a few years ago. Remember the old landline conference call? It was once a big problem to be able to add a third person to a phone call. Now you can spend months researching available solutions.
And this doesn’t really even affect systems like desktop video conferencing, conference call extensions, and the interaction of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services with all forms of web conferencing. Once prohibitively expensive for many, attending teleseminars in foreign countries is now an affordable alternative with low-priced VoIP gateway services that allow fixed price calls to any landline or mobile phone.
As Internet service continues to increase in speed and decrease in price, the utility of these types of conferencing solutions will continue to expand. The growth of the cybersphere and the development of like-minded and purpose-oriented communities on the Internet will continue to drive the development and integration of conferencing and communications software and services. In a very real sense, conferencing software is at the heart of the new realities that the explosive growth in Internet use in all corners of the world is creating. These are social apps and they are changing the way people live, interact and see each other.
There is yet another form of widely used “conferencing” software that is rarely mentioned in this regard. Multi-user, real-time, online games of all kinds, from role-playing games to live betting (playing poker with your friends, live roulette, etc.). Some of these systems are very sophisticated and many people love them. Its attraction lies not only in the ability to vicariously be another person (or something) or to do things that may not be available locally, but in the social interactions and communities that develop. While browsing is hardly a social activity, people are social creatures, and the popularity of all sorts of solutions that offer interactive contact and a sense of community reinforces this.
The commercial use of audio conferencing in the form of teleseminars and pre-recorded audio streams has experienced tremendous growth in the last year alone. Bandwidth still limits the quality of video that is often used with pre-recorded audio to fairly static material. But this is changing as compression and transmission technologies improve. The big breakthrough yet to come is the technology to effectively and affordably make, first, high-quality live one-way video and furthermore, multi-directional live interactive video over the Internet. If it seems like a difficult task, perhaps impossible, think again about what has happened in the last five years. And the future is coming faster all the time.
Copyright 2005 Richard Keir