teleconf.txt		1/31/82
contributed by Roy Lipscomb, Logic Associates

The following letter presents reasons why computer conferencing
(conference trees) can be preferable to video and audio confer-
encing, even where the latter are available.

...............................................................
(Reprinted from Infosystems, Jan 82, p. 6)

ADVANTAGES OF COMPUTER CONFERENCING

I am responding to the article on teleconferencing, INFOSYSTEMS,
August, 1981.  While there is reason to be excited about the
video aspect of conferencing, a closer examination of the costs,
flexibility, availability, modularity, impact, etc. is necessary.
Computer conferencing offers far greater price/performance than
video or audio, usually less than $1 per minute.  Some examples
of the advantages of computer conferencing are:

*  Improved communications among managers.  The network becomes
a "place" in the thought processes of those attached to each
other via computer communications and this makes it possible to
bring people together more frequently who are normally separated
by travel time, time zones and conflicting schedules.

*  Reduced turnaround time on urgent decisions or actions.  (In
one US Army test using computer conferencing, decisions went
from one to two weeks to one to two days in many cases.)

*  Reduced interruptions from telephone calls--information is
passed when the received can best accept it.

*  More flexible choices of time and place of interaction--
whenever and wherever the user finds it is convenient.

*  Improved ability to organize messages and responses for most
logical presentation.  The discipline of putting thoughts into
writing before commuicating them improves the quality of communi-
cations.

*  Decreased tension among managers--they are always connected to
the office, never out of touch.

*  Improved systems productions of multiple copies (instead of
making multiple telephone and/or conference calls).

*  Improved techniques for solving problems which require action
and review by several people and activities.

*  Improved project tracking to keep everyone involved in the
project informed from the beginning to the end.  People can enter
the process at any point and have full documentation to evaluate
the process to date.

*  Training of new staff is thus accomplished at a lower cost per
student without losing current staff members time away from the
job.

*  Improved management/employee relations affected by a policy
document can digest it more easily at its successive stages of
development.  (SIC)

*  Eliminates scheduling problems that all members of a group
be in the same place at the same time.

*  A distinctive feature of computer conferencing is its ability to
support both synchronous and asynchronous communications.  Face-
to-face conferences are necessarily synchronous--everyone must
be in the same place at the same time.  Computer conferences can
be synchronous, and this option influences other patterns of
usage as mentioned above.  However, computer conferences can be
held without regard to time as pointed out earlier.

Cross Communications has developed a computer conferencing,
mail and announcement system called MATRIX.  It offers many of
the standard conferencing features but many personal user-friendly
enhancements as well.

I hope you will consider computer conferencing more than just a
stepchild of video and audio.

Thomas B. Cross
Cross Communications Co.
Boulder, CO

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