Airline Hype vs. Collaboration Reality
Published 7/10/2012
David Danto
Principal
Consultant - AV / Multimedia / Video / UC,
Dimension
Data
Director
of Emerging Technology, IMCCA
Just
recently the airplane manufacturer Airbus Industries released results of a "two year global consultation"
that came to some interesting conclusions. Apparently:
·
Social
Media won’t replace face-to-face meetings.
·
Aviation
is the real World Wide Web.
·
Over
60 percent of people will fly more by the year 2050.
·
People
want to fly more than they do now despite social media and collaboration tools
revolutionizing how people keep in touch.
Airbus
came to these conclusions after speaking with 1.75 million people in 192
countries.
Umm... OK, but were any of those they spoke
with people who actually use social media and collaboration tools? Even more
than that, were any of those people recently at an airport?
Speaking
for myself -- and I know I fly a lot more than most -- those conclusions seems
way off-base. The business travelers I meet at airports and in airplanes are for the most part totally fed up with the airline industry.
If I told them they could do their jobs without flying they’d break into
spontaneous celebration.
What
was once a glamorous perk is now -- quite literally -- a pain in the rear. Commercial business travel is at best a necessary
evil. If you give a traveler access to effective tools for videoconferencing
and collaboration he or she will opt to use it whenever possible. It will allow
people to work as effectively as if they are in the same location.
If that
means I can take even one less trip, deal with even one less underpaid,
over-stressed, and surly airline worker, put even one less dollar in the
pockets of an overpaid, clueless airline executive, or stand in even one less
TSA line for the privilege of emptying my pockets and having my privates scanned
-- then I’m in for sure.
Social
media, unified communications tools, desktop video, telepresence -- all these
tools most definitely will cause me to fly less and commute less in general as
they inevitably continue to improve.
Using
the devices in my home office now (desktop video appliance, two PCs, one iPad,
and a myriad of really innovative Bluetooth/USB headsets, speakerphones,
cameras, and accessories) I can give presentations to clients, collaborate with
my full team, and be as effective a teammate as any one of my neighbors who
waste a couple of hours a day commuting to an office. Now there’s the real
travel saver -- not the elimination of the occasional flight but the
elimination of the daily commute.
As for
the airlines, I believe people will fly much less in the future, not just
because of how good collaboration tools are and will continue to be, but also
because the flying experiences will continue to get worse as airline firms keep
cutting capacity, reducing costs, and unbundling charges. As for Airbus and its
two-year global consultation... well, perhaps they should have consulted a
mapmaker, as apparently denial ain’t just a river in
Egypt.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This blog was written by David Danto and contains solely his own,
personal opinions. It originally was published at UBM’s “The Video Enterprise”
website that was closed down November 1st 2012. Here is a link to the Google cache of the
page with comments. I do not know how
long Google keeps these pages.
David has over 30 years of experience providing problem solving leadership
and innovation in media and unified communications technologies for various
firms in the corporate, broadcasting and academic worlds including AT&T,
Bloomberg LP, FNN, Morgan Stanley, NYU, Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan Chase. He
recently joined Dimension Data as their Principal
Consultant for the collaboration, multimedia, video and AV disciplines. He is
also the IMCCA’s Director of Emerging Technology. David can be reached
at David.Danto@Dimensiondata.com or DDanto@imcca.org, he can be followed on
Twitter @NJDavidD , and his full bio and other blogs and articles can be seen at Danto.info.