Part of my job used to be teaching and supporting instructors who were teaching classes remotely using Video Chat. Because of this experience I often wonder why people don’t use it more, why people continue to travel for business meetings.
On the other hand, I understand the need for meeting and interacting with someone in person to develop the relationship. But once that relationship is developed, much of the conversation can be taken “online”.
I even wanted to do a research project to determine the best video image to use during a video chat session; none, head only, torso and head, full body or full room for various situations; education, collaboration, presentations, etc. Maybe one day if/when I get my PHD I’ll use it as my thesis topic.
In the meantime I did find a cool article from Instructables on how to set up your own video system using the WebRTC protocol with a PubNub account and 20 lines of code on your own web site. I thought it was pretty cool that the technology has come so far.