June 29th, 2009 · No Comments

Persson, whose company serves 700 international firms including IBM, Cisco, Credit Suisse, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and the National Science Foundation and has offices in London, New York City and Singapore, says Globe is the only virtual-meeting company she knows of that is integrating green practices with its technological mission. But the movement is innately green, she adds. Even if businesses currently are only concerned with saving money – and some, with keeping employees happy (no travel, happier workers) – they are doing the planet a great favor by using platforms like ON24’s.

In an early 2009 survey by that company, polling 10,000 enterprise executives (people who put on physical trade shows, sales-training seminars and other events), statistics showed a great fondness for the idea of hosting these events online:

• 76 percent of those surveyed said their company has already started using virtual events (53 percent) or plans to begin using them (23 percent) to supplement physical events in 2009
• 42 percent expect participation in physical trade shows to drop by 50 percent
• 64 percent expect fewer ‘physical’ sales from their seminars, or none at all
• 60 percent expect training, management or other internal events to drop 20 to 50 percent

Persson, who is based in the Bay Area, says that over the past two years the demand has exploded – more so than she had expected.

Even further west, in Hawaii, the Kaua’i Chamber of Commerce has gone “virtual-comms,” providing its members with a web-conferencing service. As chamber president Randall Francisco explains wryly, “We’re on an island in the middle of the Pacific (the fourth largest of Hawaii’s eight, called the “Garden Island”). I thought it was a practical and business-forward thing to do. …With Aloha Airlines (and other regional airlines) shutting down, I watched the escalations in airfare, just between the islands here. And with airfare around $175 from one island to another, and car rental at $65, and if there are meals and registration fees… it was cheaper to go to Vegas than to go to another island!”

With the virtual meeting platform, Francisco says his 80 member businesses can use technology to be “a 24-7 commerce business,” adding that that’s a very good thing in these times.

“If you can provide this as a benefit to members and even non-members, then I think we’ve done our job to introduce them to global possibilities,” he says. “Being in the Pacific and Asia, while America sleeps Asia is wide awake and conducting business. And vice versa. … I think this whole experience in the Middle East, in Iran, demonstrates the need for this type of global connectivity. … I think if people can think globally and cross-culturally, as we already do in Hawaii, we (humans) can change the world,” ultimately creating more harmony and greater appreciation of the natural world, Francisco says. He points out that sustainability and a pristine environment are paramount to Hawaii’s survival – which largely rests on tourism and retail.

“We’re also one of the leading places in the world where we’re highly connected to the use of the internet,” he adds. Virtual meetings, provided through a local grant, was a no-brainer for the Kaua’i Chamber.

It’s precisely this sort of thing that gets Austin-based futurist and president of the international Futures Lab Derek Woodgate very animated. Speaking by phone from Chile and later Austin, the consultant and author of two books – “Future Frequencies” and, soon, “Future Flow” - says the world is changing at warp speed because of the sort of technology that manifests in virtual meetings and online trade shows. His excitement was evident over the telephone. But we could have seen it if the interview had taken place via virtual meeting.

“In 2007-2008, something like 300,000 Chinese people were using Skype – per day,” Woodgate says. Over the last two or three years, there has been explosive growth in services such as Skype and Twitter, along with web-conferencing and virtual meetings.

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