Lately I have been experimenting with Vidyo (www.vidyo.com), a videoconferencing tool designed for the professional SOHO/SMB/Roadwarrior market. And the tests showed why a 2 person video call is a gimmick, and 3 or more is a major difference.
The promise of videoconferencing is that you save a lot of time, money and carbon emissions. Or act as a fallback option, as the recent volcano eruptions in Iceland have showed.
Nevertheless so far my practical experience has been with high-end systems (like the wonderful roomsized conference facilities of Cisco) or Skype with video.
The highend systems are impressive, but its like going to a jobinterview: not a casual thing, you make an appointment and dress up, prepare yourself. Skype on the other hand is great for the sound quality of the wideband codec (if the connection is OK), but I fail to see the added value of a moving picture of my face : as many others, I am disappointed by how I look when viewed through a webcam.
So, is there a market for something in the middle? Even when it lacks (as of now) chatting, recording voice and video?
The first impressions were OK but nothing convincing. Ok, the image quality is quite good when you have a good camera and connection, the synchronisation between sound and image is better than Skype. Big deal?
When we started to have multiperson conversations the difference became serious and obvious. And its not so much the product as the experience of seeing all the faces simultaneously while having a conversation. It makes a LOT of difference between having a conference call by phone or a multiperson videoconference. But why?
The difference acording to psychologists s that when you have a conversation between 2 persons, you always know who is talking and who is responding. A good voice quality is enough to sense the reactions and emotions of the other person.
This changes completely when there is a multiperson conversation. We as humans have an uncanny subliminal capability to read instantaneously the emotions in a group from the non-verbal communication as expressed by bodylanguage and facial expressions. So being able to see the reactions of people NOT speaking, and them being able to see your reactions adds a lot to the richness and depth of the conversation. And as I can tell from my experience, it does.
Vidyo has a good product, as far as I can see. It works on your laptop, is interoperable with highend systems like Polycom and Tandberg. Tandberg apears to have a similar product and others will follow most likely. Great, competition works.
The key take away from these tests is that videocalling is a gimmick which does not really add value. Videoconferencing with multiple persons however has a lot of value.
