Video Conferencing, the World, and You

It’s been a long time coming, but in the final stretch, video conferences sprinted to the finish line… almost. When they first came out, they were expensive, cumbersome, choppy, and hard to find. And now our top-of-the-line video conferencing systems have come far, but they are still expensive and cumbersome. Be expectant, the future is just around the corner.

In 2008, you can pop up a little video window on your computer using a free chat/instant messaging window – having first bought a thirty dollar webcam, of course. It’s small and choppy, but free and easy. You could also spend around a hundred dollars and get a nice webcam and use a video conferencing service. This is a good option for clear, smooth video conferencing. It’s a far cry from a floor to ceiling screen with resolution so good you can count freckles, but unless you have half a million dollars, it’s as close as you’re going to get.

Despite having said that, we’ve come a long way in just five years. Small and choppy video was all you could really get back then, and now we can get decent quality and sound, inexpensively and easily. Imagine what it will be like in five more years.

Even so, to get there, we have to extensively use what we have now to justify progressing the medium. Like a mom telling us to finish our greens before we can get dessert, to get insanely good video conferencing for everyone, we have to show that there is a demand, a need to encourage developers to make things better and cheaper.

The good news is that collectively, we are already doing this. Hospitals are a prime example of cutting edge video conferencing being put to use. Doctors in hospitals across the country or world can discuss a particular diagnosis instantly via a video conference. In some hospitals, screens attached to motorized bases roll around the halls of medicine controlled by doctors in their offices or homes. They follow-up with their patients, look for complications, discuss further treatments, etc. and roll to the next room.

Another incredible use of video conferencing combined with robotics is telesurgery. Robot arms with medical attachments can be controlled remotely and with video conferencing, surgeons can see and be seen despite being worlds away. Imagine the world’s foremost heart surgeon treating patients around the world, all from a room in his local hospital.

For military purposes, video conferencing has provided options that were needed, but not feasible before. HQ can now converse with all of its battlefield commanders at once. No more do leaders have to leave their men to give reports or updates on the situation. More importantly, video conferences allowed for real-time collaboration of all commanders in one session. Splice in real-time video from the front, and a clearer picture of what to do is formed.

Education isn’t left out of the video conferencing revolution. Guest lecturers are no longer a rare and expensive event. They can be piped in to hundreds of classrooms at once to enlighten and teach. And it’s not just on college campuses either, students of all grades are benefitting from remote teaching. Naturally, this led us to remote learning. Especially in low-income locations, students who normally wouldn’t have a shot at an education can log in and be taught by teachers who might not even be in the same country.

Video conferences have made great strides in business as well. Salespeople are able to visit and talk with vastly more customers and potential customers in a fraction of the time that it used to take. A company’s branch managers can quickly get together to discuss strategies and new policies with the time and expense of a phone call. CEOs often get their most important employees on a video conference to get the feel of what is going on in the company.

What does this mean for you if you are not one of the people in the examples above? It means that because of the ground-breakers in science, medicine, the military, education, and business, video conferencing is a very real and very affordable option for you. If your business doesn’t have it, get it. There are a myriad of ways that video conferencing can help you improve your communication, efficiency, and budget. All you have to have is a little imagination. If you can’t imagine anything, wait five years and take your pick of the incredible solutions to be had then.