Going virtual to aid productivity

Yesterday I attended 4 meetings. Each of them was completely different in content and purpose, and each of them was based in a completely different location.

The first meeting was in fact a course, where I was being taught how to use a new cloud-based virtual classroom portal. At the meeting I was actually given control of the system so that I could try it out and get my hands dirty.

The second meeting was working with three others on a project where we were updating some documents together – using one master document and everyone being able to amend it with their updates/amendments, changing things around, reformatting and designing some graphics.

The third meeting was a typical client sales meeting  where I explained the LPI’s COLF (Certified Online Facilitator) programme and showed those in attendance some examples of the content and assignments using two different web conferencing systems we can offer the course in.

The final meeting was a one-to-one meeting where we discussed examples of how storytelling was a great technique for aiding learning. I particularly enjoyed this meeting as we could each outline examples of some stories that we have used in various events.

For each of the four meetings, the participants were from different locations – the first meeting they were based in London, the second they were from York, the third were from Shrewsbury, and the final one they were in West Sussex.

Of course, you will have gathered by now that these four, different, meetings were not physical meetings; they were all virtual meetings using Webex  in three of them and Skype (using webcams) for the fourth one.

For each of the meetings I did not have to leave my work location.

• Total cost of travelling: £0
• Total cost of subsistence: £0.
• Productivity: enormous. If I had travelled to each meeting, it would have used four days of my week. Now I have those four days available for other productive things for the organisation.

So the whole point of this is that going virtual, using web conferencing systems, is much more than formal learning events or webinars.

For those of you struggling to convince your managers as to the value of ‘going virtual’ feel free to use this as an example of how it can help the business.

Can you think of ways a web conferencing system can be used in your organisation?