Ready for Prime Time

My daughter has been using Skype to call back to Minnesota during her visit to France.  I finally signed up for an account this morning, and was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the call.  My previous experience with voice over IP, a few years back, was that it was not ready for prime time.  At 2.1 cents per minute, it’s going to become my preferred means of making international calls (although calls to mobile #s are spendier).

The experience with Skype fit nicely with a request from a client to add a web cam and download collaboration software (in his case, Microsoft Office Communicator 2007) to begin doing some live chats over the web.  This particular client is a real pioneer in the management of global virtual teams, and has conducted weekly team audio calls for years.  They have the drawbacks of all teleconferences:  everyone signs in, but not all are present.  When we tested it this afternoon, the addition of video adds a dimension of engagement that should make those calls more interesting.  Of course, the addition of a web cam to a laptop means dealing with a whole host of issues I never thought I’d have to be concerned about, like what you can see behind me, or whether the camera is in focus.  It’s also a wake-up call for people like me that are inconsistent about personal appearance when I’m not face to face with clients!  No webcam calls before 8:00 am, I think.