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Can HD Meetings Save the World?

Posted by patrick

Last week President Obama gave a speech in Cairo, Egypt during which he asked the Muslim World for “a new beginning.”  I actually missed the speech when it aired live, but I was able to watch it over the weekend on Youtube.

When I went to pull up the video online, it occurred to me how much the world has changed.  I’ve seen a handful of presidents speak over the years, sometimes over radio, but mostly on TV.  What’s clear to me is that today, it’s all about the web.

I don’t think we’ll ever replace the value of in-person interactions, but I do think that virtual meetings can have a significant impact on the way companies conduct business, governments run countries, and in general, connect people to one another.

We all know that it’s going to take a lot more than a motivating speech to truly resolve the crisis in the Middle East.  Most likely, it will involve a series of follow-up conversations and meetings in order to make some real progress.

Can we expect Obama to board Air Force one every single time he wants to talk to leaders overseas?  The world’s problems would never be resolved that way, at least not any time soon.  It’s for this reason that I think virtual meetings have a real shot at saving the world.

Using today’s technology, we can connect world leaders frequently and efficiently.  We can avoid hours of excessive travel time and get to the root of conflict faster (we’ll also save fuel and do wonders for the environment in the process).  And with Fuze Meeting, conducting meetings in HD has never been easier.  We can’t quite replicate the experience of being in the same room with someone, but an HD meeting does a pretty good job of compensating for that.

It’s an ambitious thought, but I’d like to picture Obama in his slippers, conducting business remotely in the White House and saving the world, one HD meeting at a time.