Communications guru Karé Anderson recently wrote about Cisco Systems' “telepresence” videoconferencing in Fast Company magazine. This product, which uses 3D holographic-like technology, makes people feel like they're sitting at the same table, so much so that one user told me when a person dropped a pen on the other side of the “meeting room table” (in other words, on the screen), he actually bent down to pick it up. (Check out the demos on YouTube and search “telepresence.”)

In Anderson's article, she urged meeting organizers to use this technology “to bring the most relevant speakers and panelists to the same stage — no matter where they are standing in the world. Encourage convention centers and hotels to provide this. … Set the bar higher.”

I agree. Why have virtual meetings always resided on the fringes of our industry? It's as if meeting managers are afraid of them and see them as a threat to their jobs — or they just don't think e-meetings are their responsibility.

But e-meetings are becoming an integral part of companies' overall communications strategy. Nearly half the planners surveyed by Meeting Professionals International for its FutureWatch 2008 report said that webcasts would be “more or much more frequent” in 2008. As technologies like telepresence become more accessible, companies are going to convert a percentage of their meetings to virtual, or use technology to extend the audience at live events.

It's time to take charge, which is exactly what our cover subject, Xerox's Tracey Wilt, did. Three years ago, she became the go-to person for people throughout her company who want to plan live — as well as electronic — meetings. “Since then, the synergies have been huge,” she says. “Internally we like to say, ‘However you need to meet, we have the solution.’”

Right now, she's the exception. Almost half of the corporate planners surveyed for the MPI survey said they would be “minimally or not at all responsible” for executing webcasts in 2008.

Just like strategic meetings management, virtual meeting management is another area that's ripe for our industry to tackle. Learn how Wilt and others are blazing the way in our cover story, on page 12.

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