Home Alone, and Dreaming of Better Video Conferencing

Rapid changes can push us toward new ideas. Since the coronavirus took over our lives, we’re traveling less, truly working from home, and holding more video conferences. Me too. I just led a 700-person WebEx for the entire global Idean team – from my living room!

We do a lot of events and do them well. But there’s no replacing the value of face-to-face, which became once again clear during our nice online event.  Sure, I did my job. Presented my Keynote. Shared vision and ambition and all that juicy stuff. Addressed some everyday concerns. Asked for feedback. Tried to keep the energy up. And shared the digital stage with my amazing colleagues Jess, Mikko-Pekka, James, Ronan, Ville, Matt, Laura, Andy, Idun, Henrik, Sampo, and Gabriel. But this 90-minute session really left me thinking about what was missing. Like, there was no room to bring any sort of personal style. It was nothing at all like delivering a keynote in person.

I couldn’t really “see” anybody, just me talking to my laptop and everyone muted as it usually is – giving me no idea whether I was hitting home or not.

And there were some glaring limitations. Such as the reality that I had to keep one eye on my mobile to spot the questions pouring in via texts.

Afterward, I started thinking even more: If this is where the world is going we need to get moving on a radically different model.  Video conferencing has been around forever. Yet the interfaces and experiences haven’t really markedly improved in decades. I mean, the UI might be “quite there” for some people but the actual experience sucks big time for everyone. Leaders are Cisco (WebEx), Zoom, Microsoft (Skype), and LogMeIn. We’ve gone with WebEx mainly because it does the basics well – the connection is reliable. Yet, when it comes to experience, I can’t say it’s any better than the competition.

My hunch is that today’s headlines will push these companies and startups to finally innovate. In other words, when conferencing was a secondary choice, many people were perfectly content to settle for its limitations. Now that it’s not just a necessity but often a first choice, we have to make it a lot better.

So in the spirit of innovating the video conference, let’s go wild for a second. First, there’s nothing worse than a cold start. I want to be able to pump up the crowd with music. And while we’re at it, how about a change of scenery? Swap out my dull white bedroom wall with a nice backdrop that would be synced to my storytelling (not just a fake beach). And what about a noisemaker?  I once played in a rock band – and during my recent WebEx had the urge to knock out a drumroll or bang a gong at key moments. Even more I wanted to feed off the tremendous energy of my talented team. As we say at Idean: “Feel the Love.” I mean – let’s get interactive! Make me feel I’m part of the team, and give people the power to respond and “give em a voice” in real time. It should not be that hard. I can see many ways to build this through the mobile companion app without disrupting the flow.

And while it’s not all about fireworks and confetti guns in digital format, we should create an experience that helps us to improve ourselves. It should be meaningful.

So, in this age of data and analytics, I started pondering more how could I turn this limited platform into more of a leadership tool? The business world just had a seismic shift. Some of our biggest tech clients have ordered (or, to be precise, allowed) employees to work from home. I’m super proud of all these companies like ours, Capgemini, taking leadership in being proactive and acting to protect people (unlike some governments, but that’s another post). Many universities are moving to online classes – even major events are moving to online only. Who knows how long this weird phase of “social distancing” will last? What if I need to run Idean for months through online tools? WebEx or Skype won’t cut it.

I want a conferencing platform with attitude. One that enhances my ability to lead. And as a leader, I wanna learn.

The truth is I want online to feel and behave more like offline. Give me a body-language simulator – and find a way to make it to the digital world. And how about an audience “mood monitor”? Wouldn’t it be great to be able to “read the room” even when you can’t see the room? When you have 20 rooms dialing in? Which of course reminds us of another capability that is sorely missing. We desperately need a better dashboard for the speaker, so that you can juggle all the inputs in one channel. Or why don’t you go and integrate all this to a Slack channel, natively. So many possibilities with integrations here.

How about some true two-way interaction? What’s a keynote without applause? And to keep me on my toes, audience members might have a snooze button to let me know when I need to step up the pace.  Or maybe smart computer-vision AI could get some anonymous real-time data for me. Tell me if someone is already sleeping or facilitate real-world behaviors such as hand-raising or giving the thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Finally, there’s the potential to do this redesign in an entirely different, compelling way. Just as emojis elevated texting to a whole new level, video conferencing sorely needs a fresh, visual paradigm that puts experience first. For instance, what’s the typical journey of a major video conference? When does it truly start? We sure can do better than a typical, boring calendar entry. Couldn’t we customize each invitation, maybe add a nice little poll there? Offer something fun, useful and playful. Make people feel included and part of a community. Also, where does a video conference really end? Don't we need a Q&A? What’s the behavior we wanna tap into after everyone walks away? It’s hanging around with people!

Those nice 10-15 minutes after the show, when you get your breath back and go get coffee with your colleagues, talk, listen, innovate, have a bit of fun – and activate the audience to get busy with what we just talked about. You won’t find that in today’s video conferencing. 

What are we waiting for? It comes down to all those Signature Moments we can identify, define, design and develop – to get video conferencing to feel like 2020, not the last century. Should it be a leadership tool? Entertainment? Storytelling? Purely functional? Or a mixture of all three? The choice is ours.

Please share your ideas on what you would like to see, hear and feel in your next video conference. No limits here. Let the wild, crazy ideas fly. We’ll gather them up and share them in a future story – and then brainstorm how to make them happen. Ping me at [email protected] or just comment here.

Because we’re gonna do it.

Bring on the future!