* ALL FEATURES ARE COPYRIGHT PROTECTED AND BELONG TO THE MAGAZINE THAT
COMMISSIONED THE WORK. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES MUST THIS CONTENT BE
USED ELSEWHERE BY ANY OTHER PARTY.Microsoft
Smarter Working guide, for Microsoft customers. Distributed with
national press, including The Daily Telegraph, spring 2005: Interview
with Noel Edmonds on remote meetings
Noel Edmonds, of Saturday Swap Shop fame, on the broader
value of collaborative technology
Pull quote: This is the untravel business. Were competing with
the airlines and train companies. Why would I want to spend 200
travelling with Great Western to London and back from Exeter when I
can save my time as well as the fare to achieve exactly the same
results from where I am now?
Anyone of a certain generation will remember Noel Edmonds from BBC
1 on Saturday mornings, where his innovative Swap Shop TV
programme for kids mixed pop star interviews with the chance to swap
unwanted rollerskates for the latest Sindy doll. The programme
pioneered the use of the telephone for enabling viewers to interact
with the show and its guests; previously the only means of
corresponding with the BBC was by letter.
Fast-forward 30 years and Edmonds is still innovating. Today he
runs a number of businesses, with offices in Devon, London and
Manchester. It was splitting his time between these three locations
that sparked his interest in videoconferencing eight years ago.
This brings him to his latest mission, to persuade the nations
senior executives to radically cut down their business travel. Edmonds
is chairman of the Meeting Without Moving Foundation, which works
closely with business support organisations such as the IoD to promote
the strategic use of collaborative technologies among UK businesses.
He is also chairman of the Unique Group of companies, which
includes VMC, one of the UKs foremost providers of videoconferencing
systems and support services, and the face2face nationwide network,
which makes over 350 video meeting rooms available to the public for
just 50 an hour. The challenge now is to get people to use them
instead of heading for the motorway, Edmonds notes.
Many managers still dont have a strategic approach to meetings,
and couldnt tell you what these cost the company over a year. To get
companies embracing videoconferencing and collaborative technologies
needs a change in peoples mindsets.
For Edmonds, the vision for the future is one of being able to be
in email contact with someone, then be able to click a button to
initiate real-time video contact over the Web.
Indeed, the Polycom videoconferencing systems deployed in the
nationwide face2face are the subject of a major strategic alliance
with Microsoft, which sees Polycoms video and audio conferencing
products being integrated with Microsoft Windows Messenger, to allow
users to transition effortlessly from an instant messaging session to
a multipoint audio or video session, providing a rich media
collaboration experience that will enable faster decision-making and
greater productivity across workgroups and remote workers.
This is the untravel business, Edmonds notes. Were competing
with the airlines and train companies. Why would I want to spend 200
travelling with Great Western to London and back from Exeter when I
can save my time as well as the fare, to achieve exactly the same
results from where I am now?
Its a good point.
|
