Meeting from afar

Until a few months ago, Eastern Washington University Business and Finance Vice President Mary Voves traveled by plane once a week to Olympia for meetings. Two months ago,the university installed videoconference equipment in her Cheney office. Now Voves and her associates regularly dial up a video conference via the Web with state officials when a meeting is needed. “We use it a lot,” Voves said. Even before Gov. Chris Gregoire ordered major budget cuts within state agencies, EWU was moving toward simpler, less costly ways for workers to communicate instead of relying on travel.

“We’ve been anticipating this (state-imposed hiring freeze) since April,” Voves said. “It definitely is a result of pocketbook concerns” about the cost of travel.

Down in Pullman, Washington State University administrators are seeing the same effort toward using Web cameras and Web software to simplify or reduce travel.

Donald Dover, who is WSU’s videoconference operations manager, said he’s been noticing a big uptick in requests by students to find ways to use Web tools to connect with distant classrooms or instructors.

A few months ago Dover would have said the trend toward videoconferencing was mostly the result of people knowing newer technology had come along, and they were eager to test it.

“Now it’s not just that,” said Dover. In the past two weeks he’s handled requests from students in Roseburg, Ore., La Grande, Ore., and Nelson, B.C., all wanting to find what software and hardware they’d need to get connected to WSU distance classes.

“That’s definitely due to pocketbook issues,” said Dover.

Videoconferencing grew in popularity nationwide after Sept. 11, mostly as an option to cumbersome airline travel and security procedures. But in recent years that technology plateaued and didn’t grow beyond a core audience of users.

In the past six months, however, the arrival of much smarter, sophisticated Web tools, and the impact of $4-a-gallon gasoline have dramatically increased interest in using Web conferencing to simplify business connections.

Avista Utilities is an example of a company already moving toward some of those tools, not having based that decision on fuel prices so much as looking for more efficient meetings.

While Avista has invested in fairly pricey, high-end videoconferencing equipment installed in special rooms, the alternative approach across the company is to try desktop options that let each person engage in a video or audio meeting with one or several others on a team.

Steve Trabun, a regional business manager, said his company team has members spread across the Avista service area, including Medford, Lewiston and Pullman. Some of the team have been testing a Microsoft product, Office Communicator, that lets them connect to others over a broadband connection, right from desk to desk.

That eliminates the need to locate a meeting in a conference room, said Trabun. It does the same thing as a full-fledged videoconference, in giving people visual information about the person on the other end of the conversation.

“We have monthly one-on-one meetings with our (team) boss, Judy Cole,” said Trabun. “Judy just had a meeting with our guy in Pullman and used Office Communicator instead of relying on a phone call.”

After that session, Cole told Trabun that seeing the other person with a Web cam made the meeting much more useful.

Graham Smith, an IT systems manager at Avista, said the timing of the utility’s move toward those tools is coincidental to the spike in the price of oil. The company is deploying other methods of sharing information across distant departments and far-flung buildings, Smith said. One other tool is Live Meeting, a Microsoft tool that lets team members use a shared online work space on their computers. Each person can chat with others and at the same time upload photos or charts that are viewed by all other members, who can also edit them and share other comments online, said Smith.

While many companies or agencies turn to video tools, it’s a bit different for Spokane law firm Lee & Hayes. For most of its past 10 years, the intellectual property firm has relied heavily on videoconferences to discuss projects with clients and to hold meetings with its employees around the planet.

Even so, the firm is learning that isn’t always the best choice, said Dan Hayes, one of the firm’s founders.

“We’ve learned from experience that videoconferencing doesn’t work very well in trying to maintain close personal relationships with clients,” Hayes said. “So we’ve actually had to emphasize a little more in-person contact through the years, especially when dealing with key contacts within our client companies. Otherwise they forget who we are.”