When you see what someone looks like, when you interact with them, even through Telepresence – you bond with them, you feel connected. You KNOW them and when you know someone, you will be more loyal and productive since you want to make the people you know happy. Telepresence meetings foster a teaming environment.

Don’t believe me? I can prove it.

Have you ever watched a movie or TV show where one of the characters started crying and it made you tear up? You don’t know that person, they are an actor on a screen that you will never meet but the experience is strong. Just by seeing their eyes get cloudy, you connect and feel empathy and it makes you cry too. (Or think about sports for you big strong silent types.)

Why bring that up? Do I want you to have a telepresence meeting and make everyone cry? No, of course not! I just wanted to illustrate that video is indeed a very powerful medium of which you should take full advantage.

What about the classic Robert De Niro film Taxi Driver? Imagine how the iconic line “Are you talking to me?” would come off in email.  It would be hard to interpret without the right inflection.

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Do you remember the days before email? We actually had to walk to someone’s office in order to discuss a particular topic!

Do you remember the days before web conferencing and video chat were available? We actually had to travel across the country in order to attend an important meeting!

Do you ever remember a time when collaboration was so difficult?

I don’t…

I am a Millennial. A member of Generation Y…the “Facebook Generation”, “Generation Next”, or the “Net Generation”.  I am an “eighties baby”.

By definition: Generation Y is generally marked by an increased use of and familiarity with communications, media, and digital technologies. Millennials were born between 1981 and 2000. We are primarily influenced by the globalization of information, the iPod, and social networking sites and we currently comprise 22% of the workforce.

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One of the most transformative things about the Internet is the way it enables rapid asynchronous communication. Today you send an email, your colleague reads it and within a minutes or hours you are reading their response.  The very nature of the Internet breaks down the barriers of time and location.

Of course, we’ve been doing this traditional correspondence for some time, but today, with instant messaging, it happens so quickly that it has become conversational in nature.  Now consider evolving tools like Unified Communications (UC) that enable chat, video, file share and communication over IP from a single interface. UC tools are revolutionizing the way people communicate and interact in a highly virtual environment. They’re allowing people to work together in ways that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.

Take a moment to ask yourself the last time you worked on a team that wasn’t somewhat virtual or think about the number of people you work with who you’ve never met face-to-face.  The way we work is evolving and the tools and technology that enable us to be effective are too.

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Last week I signed up to talk about my career at my kid’s elementary school. I knew right away I was in trouble when I saw the red fire truck in the parking lot with children gathered around it. Luckily, I had put a new touch phone in my pocket before I left the office so at least I would have something to draw interest.

I lit in to my spiel about how the world cannot go round without sales people and the many talents needed to be an effective salesperson. I emphasized math and correct spelling while visions of some of the best sales people I have ever known, who are hopeless at both, danced in my head.

Maybe it was the shiny black device, but hands went up almost immediately. “Is this a 4G?”, “Is this device LTE compatible?”, and then, “Does your company really have the fastest 4G LTE?”  I was stunned. I field these kinds of questions all the time during business hours, but answering 8 year olds demanded a little additional consideration, and, frankly, I was a little off kilter. How did these kids know so much about digital mobile signaling?

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