Guest Post - Swagata Upreti

Swagata is one of Chris' Spring 2012 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here she writes about virtual communication.  

The primary urge of human race to remain connected with its peers has time and again inspired it to innovate. Science has provided mankind a window to peep into the other side of the world by bridging the gap between the physical locations. As a result communication has evolved from Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone to Zennstrom and Friis’s¹ Skype.

Today’s globalized world is witnessing scattered clients and distributed systems. Outsourcing has become the norm for information technology companies. In such a scenario where the parts of a machine are manufactured in one country, assembled in other and maintained in another, virtual communication provides the foundation of businesses. ‘A virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific media, potentially crossing geographical boundaries in order to pursue mutual interest and goals’². Thus, virtual communication refers to the act of connecting together a virtual community through a virtual medium often called internet. It encompasses a wide array of technologies, concepts and practices that today form a prominent part of our quotidian. Internet telephony, video conferencing, online chatting, VOIP, and texting all form a part of virtual communication. The two most important advantages of virtual communication can be stated as under:

Saves money: Virtual communication aids in saving money spent on travelling, while allowing a group of people located across various continents to collaborate over an issue.

Saves time: This mode of communication saves the time of individual that could have been wasted in airports lobbies or in travel. Moreover, an email with explicit facts and a list of action items is at times more expressive than word of mouth.

Virtual communication is an art. Based on my prior work experience I can list the following key points which are essential for virtual communication:

      1.      Identify the communication medium to be used

      2.      Formulate a clear message

      3.      Understand the time lag of the digital medium.

     4.      Ability to comprehend the language of a message by effective listening.

My stint at Infosys Limited where I led a team across two geographical locations and collaborated with the client situated in a different continent, virtual communication formed a daily part of my routine.  From live meetings that were conducted every morning, to daily status meetings over Skype during the evening, this mode of communication formed the basis of our project’s everyday work. I remember how we sought out team issues with the help of our onsite project manager, based in Charlotte within no time. My team was coached from a person sitting in U.S. about the way we were supposed to handle changes in client’s requirement. I still cherish the moment when I was praised by the client team directly for my efforts in delivering results. Having such compliments from the client directly became possible because I was a part of a meeting that was going on in the States, while I was enjoying my coffee back in India.

It is not just professional arena where virtual communication comes in handy. Belonging to a close knit Indian family, coming to US was a tough decision to make. The apprehension of my mother about not being able to see her only child, i.e. me, was understandable. This is not just my story. This is the story of a lot of students like me that come for higher education from different countries. But the power to make a video call early morning to be able to wish a mother happy birthday, wipes away all the distance related worries. Thank to virtual communication.

The use of Virtual Communication is not limited to just communication as a part of leisure or business. It has for more widespread areas of application. The seven major areas where virtual communication is used are:

      1.      Information Sharing and Knowledge Exchange

      2.      Collaborating and Team Work

      3.      Decision Making/Voting

      4.      Document Sharing

      5.      Project Management

      6.      Scheduling

      7.      E-Training

In a survey conducted by RW3LLC, New York, to find the success of working in a virtual team, just about 2% responded from across the globe that such type of working does not work³. Here the target people were working professionals, 80% of whom said that they were a part of a virtual world with members outside their country. This shows the level of success virtual communication has been able to offer.

Of course it is a well-known fact that the best of the communications is when you see the person you are speaking to face to face. The fact is well supported by a research at Cornell University⁴. Does this fact really shadow the advantages of virtual communication? I strongly believe that it does not. The basic design of virtual communication itself answers the above question. Just as the primary purpose of a wheelchair is to aid people with disability, similarly virtual communication is primarily designed to make people who are far off, interact.

Considering the wide spectrum of areas where virtual communication finds no parallel such as business, online education, medical research and operations, defense, astronomy, and personal chats, virtual communication can be deemed as one of the most important inventions that mankind has ever made.

References:

¹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype

²http://wiki.nasa.gov/cm/wiki/?id=2741

³http://rw-3.com/VTSReportv7.pdf

⁴http://cornellsun.com/node/44228

Guest Post - Nikhaar Shah

Nikhaar is one of Chris' Spring 2012 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here he writes about virtual communication.

Daiki To, a Japanese businessman, tries to hurry through the last meeting of the day in Los Angeles at 5 in the afternoon. Noticing his anxiety, a co-worker inquires to which Daiki exclaims “It’s almost 9 AM in Tokyo! My daughter will be waking up anytime, it’s her birthday!” After he completes the meeting on time, he grabs his coat and races to his hotel. As soon as he makes it to his suite, he opens his notebook and gleams with happiness as he virtually watches his daughter smile while she cut the birthday cake in front of him.

This is not a lone occurrence; 32 million [1] such stories happen each and every day to form a total of 300 billion [2] annual minutes from the free video call provider Skype. In comparison, for the same year, the total telecom minutes for the 2011 in USA were 2250 billion [3]. With everybody from governments, corporations, institutions, universities and personal users shifting to virtual communication to save cost, resources and time, the question perturbing everybody is – Is virtual communication an effective and sustainable replacement for physical communication?

As software engineers from India video-chat with their European counterparts to discuss daily progress in projects, governments set up video meeting times to address issues of their subjects and legal decisions based on video conferences with a witness from a secret location – there is no denying that virtual communication is facilitating immense savings in time, resources and cost. It is only due to virtual communication that these software engineers don’t need to travel to Europe every month, these governments don’t have to establish infrastructure in rural areas and these witnesses can be assured of better protection.

But a study from Cornell [4] shows that virtual communication is not as effective as faceto- face methods. The survey also states that a majority of executives prefer face-to-face communication to its technical counterpart, citing reasons like differentiation in bonding, multitasking, quality relationships and body language analysis. Another study [5] in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication discovers that virtual communication leads to a lot of trust issues between teams, and the trust developed is fragile and temporal.

So, to summarize – given the present state of the economy, virtual communication will increasingly keep on replacing physical communication but physical communication should be given preference during meetings where trust and bonding is of pivotal importance.

[1] http://skypenumerology.blogspot.com/2012/02/32-million.html
[2] http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/-metro-drives-magic-across-all-ourexperiences--
1053265
[3] http://www.ctia.org/advocacy/research/index.cfm/aid/10323
[4] http://cornellsun.com/node/44228
[5] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.1998.tb00080.x/full

Guest Post - Swetha Patil

Swetha is one of Chris' Spring 2012 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here she writes about virtual communication.

Communication has been derived from the Latin word "communis", meaning to share. Man is a social animal and communication is part & parcel of life.  We don’t realize but we are so dependent on technology and used to virtual communication that life seems impossible without laptop, smart phones, internet, cellular network & cell phones. But what is virtual communication? Virtual communication is interacting with others in virtual reality. There are various forms of virtual communications like video conferencing, telephone calls, emails and text messages. Technology has advanced to such an extent that geographical distances do not act as hindrance for communication.

Be it any culture, to have an effective communication certain things are essential like communication is not all about talking but also listening. When we interact we should be relaxed, which is the key to effective communication. In virtual communication we virtually connect but there has to be a bonding and respect for each other while communicating. One should be prepared, polite, enthusiastic, passionate, confident, direct and simple while communicating. Virtual communication is being extensively used in education, healthcare and entertainment to name a few. There can be two type of virtual communication i.e. synchronous and asynchronous. Synchronous virtual communication is like a phone call or video conferencing where person from each side communicates like real time conversation. Each side waits for the reply from the other side. On the other hand emails, text messages are asynchronous type of communication where people email or text and continue with their work and do not keep waiting for the reply. There is delay in asynchronous communication and does not have the non verbal element. This is why we have emoticons in instant messaging and email. These emoticons convey more than words.

I use virtual communication almost on a daily basis. I am so addicted to my iPhone that I can’t imagine any time of my day without my smart phone. I use it to make local and international calls, text my friends, surf web. With Wi-Fi and 3G, I even use it to “Skype” with my parents and friends back in India. Phone calls and Skype make me feel close to home even though I am in a different continent. Skype has become so popular that it is almost used as a verb. Virtual communication has made earth a closely bound planet. I am in Pittsburgh and my parents are in Bangalore, India but distance does not seem to be a problem because I am virtually connected. I bought a pair of boots last week and was so excited that started showing it to my parents on Skype. Virtual communication gives me confidence and a sense of attachment as I am not far from my loved ones anymore. I stay in touch with my school and college friends through googletalk, Yahoo messenger, Facebook, Skype and the list goes on. Another advantage of virtual communication is that one cannot feel lonely at any point of time. No matter where you are, if you have internet or phone, then you are connected.

For me the value of virtual communication is not just limited to personal life. I worked at Oracle for three years as an IT consultant. I worked with clients across the globe and had to interact with them at regular basis. In IT consulting communication plays a key role. Working form off shore wasn’t a big challenge as I was virtually connected with my clients and peers. We had Voice over IP phones and whenever wanted to reach someone from our desk, just had to dial a number and got connected to people in any part of the globe. Our team used to have calls, web conferences with clients which made our work simpler and faster.  Business at global level gives you the opportunity to interact with people of different cultures and learn new things about them and their culture. I worked with Asian, European and North American clients and learnt a lot of things about their business, work culture even though I did not travel to all these continents. I really find this technology amazing of connecting to someone who is miles away, in seconds.

In business the current belief is that virtual communication is replacing face- to- face interactions. Virtual communication is efficient, inexpensive and easy to use. But a study by the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research found that under certain business conditions, face to face interactions are more effective than virtual communication¹.  To some extent it is true that virtual communication cannot be equivalent to face to face communication as it lacks the personal connection that you have when interacting with someone face-to-face.

With life moving at a fast pace we cannot connect to people every time by having face to face interactions. We keep moving, our loved ones keep moving but with virtual communication we no more feel isolated. We are all connected and bonded by this great innovation of mankind i.e. virtual communication

[1]  http://cornellsun.com/node/44228

Guest Post - Tan Li

Tan is one of Chris' Spring 2012 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here he writes about virtual communication.

With the development of technology, communicating with other becomes much easier than before. Virtual communication has been seen in business frequently nowadays, such as emails, video conferences and etc. Most big companies rely more on the Internet and global technologies. As a result, how to make effective virtual communication plays a vital role in business.

Definition

Virtual communication is defined by Umea University as, “the information, communication, and action, mediated by new information technologies, where contents, intentions, or actors may be nonexistent, distorted, replaced, or created – intentionally or unintentionally.”[1] Virtual communication also means that people work in a team without actually seeing others. In 21^st century, it is a common way for completing projects in large companies with departments spread all over the world.

Purpose

The intention of virtual communication is to send the ideas and thoughts clearly without meeting one another. It is only considered to be successful that people send the message and the recipients receive the message correctly and timely.

Types

Virtual communication has different types. The internet is the most common medium in virtual communication. It could be used for emails, video conferences, social networking, online chatting room and instant messenger. On the other hand, mobile phone is another powerful tool for virtual communication. Text messages are considered effective in business, even though they are used more for interpersonal relationships. It is very important to know the appropriate type of virtual communication to use. For instance, if there is something important to announce, I will prefer to use emails or telephone calls rather than text messages.

Worries

Even though there are so many benefits brought by effective virtual communication, we still need to consider some issues that could lead to bad communication.

The first thing we should think about is the time zone. If the company has branches all over the word, the time zone will be a major consideration. For example, in United States, people in the east should make the contact after 12pm because it is just 9am in the west. If someone in United States wants to communicate with others in China, they had better choose to write an email rather than make a phone call.  

Another worry about virtual communication is the dependence on technology. For a company that relies greatly on technology, once the network fails or the database breaks down or even a slight outage for several hours, people will have nothing to do but wait for the engineer to fix it and the company may lose millions of dollars. So these companies should keep monitoring their network status and back up their databases frequently.

The last thing people should worry about is miscommunication in virtual communication. Email is frequently used these days and it has been proved to be efficient. However, something emotional like tone is lost when we type the words in the email. Communicating in a virtual world, people are not able to read your minds as easily as talking face to face. Some useful signs like facial expressions and body languages will not be seen. As a result, it will increase the potential for miscommunications. All in all, in order to make effective virtual communication, we should consider the difference in time zone, the dependency on technology and the potential for miscommunication.

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[1] Papa, Nicole. "Effective Virtual Communication" eHow | How to Videos, Articles & More - Discover the expert in you. | eHow.com. Web. 19 Feb. 2012. <http://www.ehow.com/about_6756180_effective-virtual-communication.html>.

Guest Post - Cheng Song

Cheng is one of Chris' Spring 2012 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here he writes about virual communication.

Virtual communication can represent any form of communication that is not face to face. For example, Video Conferences and Skype calls can both be considered virtual communication.

Here I want to share with you about some DOs and DONTs during Video Conferences.

DOs:

1. Do have a clear purpose of the meeting.

Compared to off-line meeting, on-line meeting is more demanding on clear purpose. Every meeting participant has to know the objective, things to be discussed and even the agenda of the meeting before video conferences. If people don’t know what is going on, they might get lost during the meeting because 1) they could not make preparation before the meeting; 2) once the meeting began, it is difficult to have a consensus about the objective and process of the meeting while everyone is sitting perhaps hundreds of miles away from each other.

2. Do have people participated in the meeting.

It is very dangerous to have a one-man show during a Video Conference. Unlike off-line meeting, in video conferences you cannot observe the eyes and faces of people accurately so in most cases, you could not know if people are bored about the topic or distracted by some other things.

So the only to guarantee that people are focusing on meetings is to get them involved. The meeting leader should assign major roles to different people, so people could share their ideas, have arguments and have a good feeling of participation.

3. Do have point in the meeting.

It is difficult to keep the meeting on the right way if people have too many ideas to share and too many arguments to settle. A good way to solve this is to have clear point of the meeting; statements like “The focus of the project is…” or “The most important thing is” are good examples of having points during a conference meeting.

4. Do set rules for the meeting.

To get people focused, the meeting should have some rules. Rules like “Everyone should get him/herself well prepared before the meeting”, “People should make notes about the meeting while others are concluding or valuable ideas are proposed.” Rules will make the meeting run more formally, because in most cases, people will not consider video conferences as serious as off-line conferences.

DONTs:

1. Don’t be distracted by other things during the meeting

When you are sitting in front of computer, there are always interesting things that might distract you from the meeting especially when the meeting didn’t reach you expectation and seemed boring. The right thing to do is to try getting focused, because unlike off-line meeting, there is no strict supervisor during a video conference.

2. Don’t refuse listening to others

“You create a wall before listening by evaluating what other people say.” In virtual communication, it is also true. You need to appreciate other ideas and voices during the video conference. If everyone refuses to do so, the meeting can have two alternative results: one, people are debating with each other which makes the meeting messy; two, people are talking, but others don’t consider it seriously.

Guest Post: Jian Xiong Yeo

Jian Xiong is one of Chris' Fall 2011 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here he writes about virtual communication.

As technology becomes more prevalent in our everyday lives, it is inevitable we rely more on it as a medium of communication. Smart phones, computers, and social media web applications are all part of a burgeoning world of information technology that is just waiting to flood us with a torrent of information and content. With new means of communications, there arise certain issues that we should be aware of to ensure effective communication in the virtual realm. Not only do we become more connected with one another, it is a lot easier to communicate with each other as well. I personally feel that this is a good thing as it promotes better communication for society as a whole.

With the advent of computers, virtual communication has never been easier and cooler. We had telephones in the past, and science fiction films depicted video phone calls. Now, this technology is right in your very hands. If you have an in-built camera on your computer or laptop, you can make such video calls to anyone over the internet. Video call services such as Skype and Google Voice now make it especially convenient for one to video-call their loved ones. Other telephony services such as Jajah are taking advantage of the vast network that is the internet and the fact that the internet is an extremely low cost commodity to disrupt the telecommunications industry. One can now make international phone calls at a very low cost with Jajah and this greatly benefits everyone especially in a world where many people constantly leave their homes and travel for work.

In addition, hardware such as smart phones allows for communication in your pocket. 3G services are now a part of many people’s smart phone plans and this allows for communication right at one’s fingertips. In the past, email was sent via computers, but now smart phones allow us to do this right in our palms. Some people are now so attached to their smart phones that they simply cannot live without them. Heavy Blackberry users who are seemingly attached to their Blackberries affectionately call them “Crackberries” due to their addictive nature. Even traditional mobile phone services such as SMS are now giving way to instant messaging on the smart phone. It just goes to show differently communication has changed as we move from one new technology to another. We transition to a traditional analog form of communication to a sleeker, more powerful form of virtual communication.

On top of the hardware discussed above, web applications such as the various social networks and blogs have also changed how we communicate and express ourselves in the virtual world to a captive audience. Websites such as Facebook and Twitter provide us with the platform to voice our opinion to the world. The internet knows no boundaries and whatever we say on these networks is broadcast to everyone with an internet connection and an internet browser. In this day and age, freedom of speech is now digital and online. This new development in virtual communication is a great way to convey ideas and encourage creative discussion online, just like how online forums were conducive to such discussions in the past.

All in all, virtual communication is something of a new development over the past decade. It is something that still requires more thought and development in terms of policy. We managed to enable effective communication in the past century and now with the new digital medium, we are bound to experience teething problems in handling virtual communication. What is ethical in this boundless virtual world is still a tricky situation. Privacy issues constantly arise in the virtual world and we have to ensure that they are fixed. But it is hard to deny that virtual communication is here to stay and we should continue to make it a great experience beneficial to mankind.

References:
Marshall, Matt. “Jajah promises simple Internet phone, but has hitches” SiliconBeat . Ed. Matt Marshall, 2006. The Mercury News. 4 Oct. 2011
Thompson, Nicholas. “Sir, to Whom May I Direct Your Free Call?” The New York Times. 2003. The New York Times. 4 Oct. 2011.
McIntyre, Sinead. “Blackberry addiction ‘similar to drugs’” Mail Online. 2006. Mail Online. 4 Oct. 2011.
Keen, Andrew. “Social media’s success formula” The Telegraph. 2009. The Telegraph. 4 Oct. 2011.

Guest Post: Hanae Timoulali

Hanae is one of Chris' Fall 2011 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here she writes about virtual communication.

Context and Virtual Teams

Communication is a central aspect of our daily lives both on the personal and professional level. In fact, we all live to communicate by interacting with each other on a continuous basis and exchanging pieces of information. Today thanks to new technologies and innovations, communication became delocalized. We can now communicate with people in other cities, countries and continents instantaneously. Tools like email clients, instant messaging application and internet telephony clients have revolutionized the way we study, work and live. Organizations, in particular, have been transformed from being centralized to decentralized. Before the proliferation of communication technologies, companies were designed to have nine to five job positions and a workforce located in one central location. Nowadays, the emergence of new communication patterns allowed organizations to be dispersed in different location with flexible working hours and a diversified workforce. The work paradigm became more oriented towards group projects with people situated in different places. The ability to understand and use virtual communication became very crucial and has a great impact on the productivity of the employees.

As a result of this, a new type of teams emerged: virtual teams. They are a great way to enable teamwork while having people in different physical locations. Today, companies are able to cut travel and relocations costs by using virtual communication technologies. Teams use emails, teleconferences, virtual meetings and IP telephony to conduct their meetings. However, the success and effectiveness of virtual teams both depend on the nature of the work to be done, the people and the management style of the team.

Not all projects and assignments are suitable for virtual communication. Sequential or integrated tasks can be challenging due to their heavy reliance on real time exchange of tangible goods, for instance. In the case of manufacturing projects, people will often feel the need to gather around particular objects and products and analyze their tangible properties: shape, dimensions, weight… Thus, organizations have to evaluate the projects and decide whether or not they are suited to be run by virtual teams.

People have different performance levels when it comes to teamwork. Not everyone performs well in virtual team environments. Such types of teams require a lot of self motivation and ability to work independently. Because of the delocalization aspect, virtual team members need to be able to work effectively with little to no external control. In addition to this, people need to be able to present their outcomes clearly through the virtual communication channels. This is where communication skills come into play: everyone on the team should be able to communicate his/her ideas clearly and concisely especially when using channels restricting non-verbal cues such as phone calls and instant messaging.

The management style of the virtual teams is also very critical. Virtual teams, if not managed properly tend to lose focus or build up misunderstandings. Clear and simple communication rules could help alleviate these problems: little to no interruption during interactions and also complete focus on the meeting by minimizing the amount of distractions such as doing other tasks during the meeting. Clear rules and protocols need to be put in place to manage virtual teams. Also, building trust between team members is very critical. Because they are in different location and relying on virtual channels, team members might be skeptical to trusting others they might not have met physically. Thus, virtual teams should be prompted to use ice breakers and socializing techniques designed to be used in virtual communication such as sharing pictures, briefings, general socializing questions unrelated to the work being done… Putting more effort to building a healthy team and team dynamic will eventually payoff in terms of productivity.

Virtual teams are only one aspect of virtual communication. However, they are becoming more and more prevalent in many areas of our lives, which might prompt us to question whether relying on virtual communication is negatively affecting our communication styles and habits. We are continuously replacing physical and face to face communications with virtual ones out of practicality while hiding behind our modern busy lifestyles. Virtual communication has indeed revolutionized our lives, yet it has impeded its human side. As a social species, we should step back and decide on the extent to which we want our lives altered by virtual communication and the areas that we think should be kept intact from it.

Guest Post: Yiwen Sun

Yiwen is one of Chris' Fall 2011 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here she writes about virtual communication.

Involve the virtual communication in customer relationship management

Do you enjoy shopping online without wandering around, checking packages feeling like you are always cared and then review for your own shopping experience on the website? It is really interesting to read others stories and share your own feelings with others. The comments on the website really matters our choice of purchase, because we are supposed to make smarter choice after preparation. To a certain extent, the influence of “people seem to like me” is really greater than the so called expertise. The social network seems to help the virtual conversation between customers. It is also a way for company to provide customer with better products and services. The company can view the feedback from their customer and give promotion and the conversation between customers will positively help others to better understand their products. The previous customer relationship management is changing to social customer relationship management based on the birth of a new technology “social network”.

Social customer relationship management (SCRM) is an addition to customer relationship management (CRM). The CRM is constructed on the technology of WEB 1.0, which only deal with the problem of read. It is a one-side communication – the company will post their information on the website and customer can read the information. The feature of this kind of technology is “present”. The SCRM is constructed on the technology of WEB 2.0, which resolve the problem of read and write. It is a two-way communication which really conducts a conversation. The customer makes use of the social network to engage in a virtual dialogue. The customer can interact with the company.

The development of virtual communication also changes the role of customer. In the past, the customers are regards as individuals or passive group. However, they serve as a partner in operation and even competitor currently. They comments on website of company, develop a virtual communication with other customer or the customer service. This significantly affect others decision. Under such background, the traditional way of purchase experience and operation approach revolute a lot (the previous way of exchange transit to the way of transaction). Now we are in the stage of interaction. People interact with each other and produce profit.

In my home country, I would like to view the comment and ranking of restaurant before I have dinner with others. The website of “www.dazhongdianping.com” also provides me with enough information. Some information is put into categories regarding different styles of cooking. I can make a good choice and know more about the specialty in the restaurant and enjoy a better experience. But sometimes I find difficulties in finding the question I really want. The information put onto the internet seems to lack integration. Maybe the next step for virtual communication is to not only conduct such kind of conversation to help customer better understanding the product and company better operate the customer management, but also try to integrate the information to make them more reasonable and effective.

Guest Post: Kelvin U. Mbatu

Kelvin is one of Chris' Summer 2011 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here he writes about virtual communication.

Virtual communication technology refers to any means of interacting with others in virtual reality or cyberspace brought about by computer-mediated communication (CMC).

In our society today, technology has globalized the communication process by making interacting with others more accessible; we can now communicate with a friend or co-worker in another country or continent cheaply and instantaneously, too. We can earn a college degree or take continuous learning classes over the internet with the click of a few buttons. The proliferation of information and communication tools, like e-mail, instant messaging and Internet telephony has revolutionized the way we work and live.

Virtual communication has brought about a myriad of new opportunities and challenges. There has been an increase in communication flow and knowledge sharing, businesses have evolved new strategies for communication and marketing, huge savings have been made on travel cost and time, etc. However, one problem that virtual communication is faced with is how to incorporate nonverbal communication?

Nonverbal communication, such as facial expressions and hand gestures, plays an important role in effective communication and relationship building. In face-to-face communication, we generally tend to search for signals when verbal messages are unclear or ambiguous. This important element of validating understanding is taken away in most virtual communication. Virtual communications tools such instant messengers have attempted to solve this problem by incorporating smiley faces (such as the :) smiley face) and some other new "texting language" as some individuals call it; however, it does lack the emotion of a face to face interaction with someone.

Today, virtual communication skills are being taught in several organizations as virtual communications tools - e-mail, social networks, and instant messengers – are increasing in capacity and global acceptance.

References:
Effective Virtual Communication, eHow.com
Virtual Communications

Guest Post: Anup Shete

Anup is one of Chris' Summer 2011 Professional Speaking students. Here he blogs about virtual communication.

Virtual communication is the process of meeting in virtual reality. There are basically two types of virtual communication processes. One is synchronous communication which includes video conferencing, phone and chat. In this type, all parties involved interact and respond immediately (or at the same time). The other type of virtual communication is asynchronous communication. This includes email, forums, blogs, etc. Here the response can be delayed (or is not expected at all). Virtual communication is catching up very fast in today’s hectic world as people find less time to travel and prefer meeting or staying in touch online and getting things done faster. However, virtual communication does come with its set of pros and cons. We’ll concentrate on active communication viz. synchronous communication in the professional scenario.

One of the best things about synchronous communication is that it saves you the time of having to physically travel to the location to meet the person. You can interact with multiple people through video conferencing and phone while cutting down on traveling time and cost. Multi-country meetings are possible without even leaving the office. I have personally had most of my client meetings as teleconference or video-conference calls. This gives you the ability to interact with the client immediately every time you have a query or need to discuss something in general. For personal interactions, applications like Skype make it easy for one to see one's family and talk to them at the same time.

Although virtual communication has its benefits, there are some downsides to communicating without being physically present. The most important one is that there is no face-to-face interaction, which can be daunting for some people. We miss out on subtle non-verbal cues like facial expressions, body language, etc., when we meet in the virtual space. As part of a study done for the Cornell Daily Sun, Christine Duffy of the Maritz travel company and Mary Beth McEuen from the Maritz institute found that virtual communication is less effective than face to face meeting (http://cornellsun.co/node/44228). The study mentions facial expressions and body language as critical factors in the process of communication which are missing in virtual interactions.

I remember an instance from one of our client meetings. It was a teleconference call between two teams, one in India and the other in the United States. Since everyone was connecting virtually, they preferred joining in from their homes. Most of the people involved in the conference thought they could multi-task and manage something else while on the call. In the end, it was complete chaos. People were trying to interact with each other while the other person was doing something else. Although a virtual meeting was the best option in this case, the idea of the meeting became casual once everyone realized it was not face to face.

On a more personal note, I agree with the study mentioned above that face-to-face meetings are more personal as well as effective. Meeting someone in person automatically straightens you up and makes you pay attention. However, there are some instances when it is not possible to be present physically, and that’s when virtual meetings come in handy. Especially with globalization, the need to interact with people from all over the world has increased, and it is definitely cheaper and more convenient to interact virtually despite its drawbacks.

Guest Post: Madhusudan Srinivasa Raghavan

Madhusudan is one of Chris' Summer 2011 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here he writes about the power of virtual communication.

It was summer 2010 when our management team at my previous organization was conducting a post mortem on an executive review meeting that ended with the client walking out of the room. The meeting feedback portal had a lot of suggestions for improvement and a plethora of things to address. However, one item that stood out as an important area of concern was the fact that our presentation was poorly structured as it never conveyed what it had for the customer. It was a moment of reckoning for us as we realized the power of virtual communication.

More often than not, most presenters fail to impress the audience primarily because of the fact that the audience never understands what is in it for them until the end of the presentation. While it is important that the presenter conveys his point of view, it is also vital that the presentation must be oriented towards the audience and must have some take-away for the listeners.

A sound structure is pretty important as the flow of the speaker would keep the audience engaged through the course of the presentation. The presentation must have an interesting introduction, good details backed with facts and a powerful conclusion. The attention span of the listeners does not remain constant throughout the lecture and hence adding stories will always help the cause as it is bound to capture the audience’s imagination.

The logistics available must be fully utilized based on need. While details are an integral part of the presentation, it is a given that the presenter is at the focal point and not the slide deck. Hence, having content that are visual and creative will help the audience relate to things better than when conveyed through slides that are too verbose or complicated. Also, too much focus on the slide deck would mean that the presenter loses out on eye contact with the audience during the process of reading through the slides. The presentation must focus on conveying the message and slide decks would just aid the speaker in the process, while the limelight is on the presenter.

It is inevitable that there will be logistical glitches that might disrupt the flow of the presentation. The wit and the presence of mind of the presenter must come into play to engage the audience with humor. The presenters could avoid such logistical interruptions by reaching the venue ahead of time and conducting a dry run with the equipment that would be used for the final presentation. This implicitly means that the presenter needs be there ahead of time to the presentation. Reaching the venue late would not only mean gaining a bad first impression, but also would create a sense of panic which might upset the morale of the presenter.

Last but not the least, any form of communication in an organizational context must result in action. Most presentations fail miserably as the audience go out of the room with the “SO-WHAT” question. As a presenter, it is very important that enough time is spent on preparation to address the need of the presentation. The success of any presentation can be attributed to the fact that audience had a clear message in it, in terms of what was the situation or detail and what is the take away and, most importantly, what would be the next steps. This, according to me, would be the most challenging part to the presenter as he/she needs to keep in mind that the presentation leads to action.

Guest Post: Sharat Sannabhadti

Sharat is one of Chris' Summer 2010 Professional Speaking students. This is his second guest post on the blog. Here he writes about virtual communication.

If you are an international student like me I am dead sure you will have ‘Skype’ on your laptop. If not Skype there will be some software similar to ‘Skype’ that lets you chat with your family back home free of cost! Isn’t that great? I can talk to my family whenever I want, and with video chat it is just like talking to them face-to-face. The technological developments in communication have so drastically changed our lives! Thanks to virtual communication, we are connected to each other 24/7.

Today we use some or the other form of virtual communication almost daily in our lives. There is email, teleconferencing, videoconferencing, chat applications, social networking sites, blogs and what not. Why is everyone communicating virtually today? (Sometimes I have even chatted with my teammate sitting right next to me instead of talking to him face-to-face!) Here are some major advantages of virtual communication that I can come up with:

1. Lets people situated at different corners of the world communicate
2. Saves travel cost
3. Saves time

In fact during the recent global economic downturn many organizations cut down on their travel costs by conducting virtual meetings. The movie ‘Up in the Air’ takes it one step further. In the movie, they use video conference calls to fire people. Videoconferencing primarily helps to save on travel costs and time. But one other major factor is that through video conference calls they can avoid the awkwardness of letting someone know that they are being fired to their face. It is strange because even in the case of videoconferencing it is just like talking face-to-face. The key point here is that it is almost ‘like’ face-to-face conversation. There are some key differences. The main advantage in this case is that the communication can end whenever the person giving the bad news wants it to end. Virtual communication does not score high when it comes to sharing human emotions as compared to face-to-face communication (although video communication has reduced the gap by a great amount). Many projects involving virtual teams fail just because of the lacking ‘human touch’ in such type of communication. It is difficult to develop a high level of understanding, co-operation and comfort with someone whom you have known only through e-mail conversations.

There are advantages and also disadvantages to virtual communication. But the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. Virtual communication is only going to develop further. Social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn have brought in a whole new dimension to our lives. There will definitely be newer inventions coming up in this space and it will be interesting to see how they change our lives!

Guest Post: Rocky Kurien

Rocky is one of Chris' Summer 2010 Professional Speaking students. Here he writes about virtual communication.

“The world is a smaller place.” This is a phrase all of us use in our daily lives. But have we ever wondered what it is that has made this world a smaller place? Apart from the improvements in transportation the innovations in communication have played the biggest role in bringing all of us closer. Virtual communication is now widely regarded as the next big wave.

So what is virtual communication? Virtual communication refers to all means of communication which happen in virtual reality (computer media). This involves a plethora of technologies from a series of communication technologies which enable users to communicate real-time and range from synchronous methods to recent trends in Web 2.0-blogs, wikis, etc. which are classified as asynchronous.

Synchronous virtual communications range from VoIP calls, internet chat and video conferencing to some technologies which we only imagined in the realms of science fiction. Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP phones have tremendously impacted the communications industry. It involves routing of audio calls via the internet instead of traditional phone lines. This service has drastically brought down the costs of audio calls. Initially starting off as a means of personal communication through providers like Skype, this technology has scaled up and is now leveraged by major corporate organizations for their business communication. Despite its benefits, audio communication has its limitations, the most important being the miscommunication which occurs due to lack of face-to-face conversation. Video conferencing is a revolutionary virtual communication technology which overcomes this limitation. It enables users to see each other via computer screens while conversing. Cisco Telepresence is the most well known video conferencing technology, has widely been adopted by industry, and enables teams from far flung corners of the world to work efficiently and collaboratively without any of the traditional travel costs and inconveniences. Another rising virtual communication technology is holographic communication. Something we have so far seen only in the Star Wars movies, it is fast becoming reality. It involves projecting a real-life hologram of the person you are communicating to giving the feeling that she/he is right there in the room with you.

Asynchronous virtual communication involves technologies like wikis, blogs, online journals, social networking sites, etc., which have drastically impacted our daily lives. Initially starting off as social media, it has enabled people to express their views, share ideas and communicate with others on a much global scale. The Facebook revolution and rise of Wikipedia and online blogs are examples. Businesses have also started adopting these technologies in the form of corporate blogs, wikis, etc., to enable collaboration and sharing of knowledge.

Virtual communication technologies have truly transformed our daily lives. It is an exciting field and we can hope for many more innovations which will further shape our lives in the future.

Guest Post: Ranjani Kumar

Ranjani is one of Chris' Summer 2010 Professional Speaking students. Here she writes about virtual communication.

Virtual communication- An introduction

Virtual communication denotes a broad spectrum of concepts, technologies and practices in using communication with the aid of cutting-edge technologies. The proliferation of information and communication tools, like e-mail, instant messaging and internet telephony has revolutionized the way we work and live. Virtual communications facilitates the ability to know and understand how to access and share information electronically and is a portal through which a world of limitless learning opportunities exist.

Our lives have never been the same
Virtual communication is implicit communication, where clicks translate into electronic signals to communicate intentions, values, and beliefs. Therefore, they may come to be of great importance in affecting people’s attitudes toward each other and toward society creating friendships across globalized world. The most prominent feature of the "information society" is increasingly intense and mobile communication, based on a multitude of media and forms of expression - speech, text, pictures, and multimedia. Sometimes the communication is direct: human-to-human; sometimes it is faceless but warm messages on the PC screen.

Organizations scale-up productivity

Organizations today have been transformed not only by effective use of virtual communication technologies, which are flowing thick and fast. Virtual communication has enabled group projects, from working alone to working with many others, both inside and outside the office, and from routine processes to creative, knowledge-based processes. Employees in organizations work non-traditional hours, work from home, travel to other locations, and perform many tasks at one time. Virtual communication is one of the greatest productivity discoveries of this century.

What the future beckons?

The future would be wireless for all forms of virtual communication. Wired communication would be passé. 4G wireless technology would bring drastic data transfer speed, enhanced security in virtual communication, use of IP addresses, reduced blips across networks and seamless video conferences. Efficient algorithms and digital technology would enhance quality of service

The road to virtual communication is endless with technology leading the way all the way.

REFERENCES:

1) Bjorn Bengtsson - Virtual communication paper

2) An introduction to virtual communication

Guest Post: Sunny Huang

Sunny is a student in Chris' Summer 2010 Professional Speaking class. Here she writes about virtual communication.

A couple of months ago, before I came to the U.S. to start my master’s program, I paid a visit to the 2010 World Expo which is being held in Shanghai, China. Admittedly, the grand Expo gathering of more than 190 countries along with many organizations, enterprises brings great opportunities for communication in economy, commerce and culture. But in spite of the excitements of “around the world in one day”, I still reserve doubts as to whether such an Expo still holds the same importance in communications as its early emergence in the 19th century. In an era dominated by instant information exchanges via all kinds of high technologies, people rely more and more on virtual communication than the real-world counterparts. Undoubtedly, there are necessities and amazing advantages to virtual communication. On the other hand, there are also potential barriers in virtual communication that are worth our close inspection.

The burgeoning telecommunications technologies in the past decades have made virtual communication possible, and step-by-step made it indispensable to our daily lives. As we’ve been so used to the high efficiency in transferring information between thousands of miles within seconds, it’s impossible to turn back to the snail ways of sending mails or telegraphs. Embracing virtual communication is not only because of the tremendous convenience brought by high technologies, but more importantly because of the critical role of high efficiency in today’s dynamic environment. It’s the real-time virtual communication via modern technologies that has “flattened” the whole world, so that more regions and enterprises can step onto the broader stage for stronger influences and larger profits. For example, by utilizing the advantages of virtual communication in cutting down cost in money and time, industries like IT gain even greater success, e.g. in products development collaborated by geographically distributed teams, or call centers that provide customer support 24/7.

Nevertheless, people keep coping with the new problems which have emerged from virtual communication along with its advantages. While e-mail and teleconferences have replaced face-to-face interactions, obstacles for better understanding still exist. Here I’d like to take my personal experiences as an example. I once worked in several software development projects that involved globally distributed design centers. Naturally, most of the communication consisted of e-mails, phone calls and teleconferences. Although the core concept in collaborative development is to optimize the resource allocations and utilizations, sometimes the negative experiences like endless e-mail discussions, and inefficient teleconferences made people suspect whether the way of working was improved or deteriorated by virtual communication. I believe for virtual communication in the international companies, although the spatial distances have been shortened, there are still mental distances because of culture differences, conflicts and/or concerns from different standpoints of different organizations. The communication styles differ between west and east originally, and while communicating in the virtual ways, the culture differences seem to be exaggerated. For example in writing e-mails, the western, professional way is to state the point clearly in the beginning, while the Chinese is to start with more greetings or background introduction, intending to avoid any feelings of aggressiveness. Besides such cultural differences, the collaborative teams came from organizations with different standpoints after all. There were conflicts and problems similar to those existing in the real-world communication. In such a sense, we should still stick to the fundamental rules in efficient communication, and at the same time adapt to specific situations in the virtual world, so that the advantages of virtual communication can be utilized to their greatest extent.

Guest Post: Carlos Barcelo

Carlos is one of Chris' Summer 2010 Professional Speaking students. This is his second guest post. Here he writes about virtual communication.

Virtual communication is already changing our daily lives and maybe we haven’t noticed it. We use it every time we use Skype, MSN or email. It is also present in the workplace with teleconferencing and other electronic tools that help people to communicate instantly with others wherever they are.

In fact, many companies are implementing virtual communication to replace real life events. A report by Market Research Media from May 2010 showed that the market of virtual conference and the trade show market will grow to $18.6bn over the next five years from almost nothing today.

The reason for this promising future increase in the market is due to the many advantages of virtual communication and in how it increases productivity and reduces costs to companies of all sizes. Some of the main benefits of virtual communication are:

o Eliminates travel times.
o Reduces the cost of meetings and conferences.
o Allows many people to communicate at the same time from different parts of the world
o Reduces the cost of training sessions with virtual training

However, many people believe that virtual communication cannot replace real life communication and in some cases that is true. For instance, when it comes to meetings, a real meeting brings more interaction among the participants. When you are present you have the chance to see more gestures and non-verbal communication among the participants. Also, people are most focused in what is going on in the meetings when they are actually in a room, since they can’t do anything else but participate. In virtual conferences people still want to review their email or a presentation while in the conference, or they might be interrupted by someone stepping in their offices.

In my personal experience, I had many phone and sometimes video conferences when I worked in Citigroup back in Chile. I had to talk to people from different parts of the world and interact with them on a daily basis. It was very interesting to see how natural it was for everyone and even for me after a few months in the company. I felt that the people I used to talk were present somehow in the office. But I have to say that when people would travel to Chile from other countries to have real life meetings, it was a better experience of communication and meetings were more productive. After those encounters, I would feel more connected to them and that improved communication with them afterward.

Virtual communication is a great way of saving cost and time without the need of traveling and it really increases the productivity of the companies, but people still need to meet with each other. Technology may help, but I don’t think it will ever be as good as real life interaction.

Guest Post: Nitin Grewal

Nitin is one of Chris' Summer 2010 Professional Speaking students. This is his second guest post. Here he writes about virtual communication.

Today I had my exit interview, the outcome of resignation from the company. I am happy to be out of professional world and be a student again. In the interview I was asked about my team members. I was speechless for a while, searching for an answer. I did not know a single person of my team personally. I was working on-site and those members were just a voice over the telephone or a folder name in my mailbox. The culprit was virtual communication.
So what is virtual communication? Let’s try to answer that. Theoretically speaking, it is a method of transferring information to a distant location. Virtual communication is possible due to extensive improvement of technology. Now I attend a lecture and even earn a degree without going through the hassles of waking up early in the morning. The development of virtual communication tools has flattened the world, bringing people close to each other.

There are different aspects of communicating virtually – internet telephones, instant messaging, and video conferencing. Virtual communication has its own advantages. Now we do not have to drive to the office at 5am to attend a meeting with a team in different time zone. This mode naturally saves time, effort, and is also cost effective. We can share information via email to a person halfway round the world in a matter of minutes. Through virtual communication we are able to share desktops and files, which are much needed in today’s competitive world to work collaboratively. Today, keeping up with your family is possible merely by means of a few clicks. Besides education and the business world, the medical field is using these tools for training and knowledge transfer. Virtual communication helps us in communicating across time and distance. It increases the potential for hiring highly-skilled experts.

Every coin has two sides, and so does virtual communication. Some experts have reservations about virtual communication. In the effectiveness of presenting of an idea, verbal clues amount to only 7%, while the rest is attained through visual clues. In some of the tools of virtual communication this crucial effect of the visual clue is missing. Research indicates that as proximity among team members decreases, the level of teamwork decreases. In the virtual world there is no bonding and trust present in the team, which directly affects the team work. There is limitation of instant feedback and interruption; hence there is a high risk of the information being misunderstood. Also, virtual communication requires high setup and maintenance costs.

Extensive research is being conducted to overcome the shortcomings of virtual communication and Hologram reporting, in which the image of a person is transferred to another place, is being considered as an alternative. This technology might provide us a combination of virtual and real communication. But being in the initial stage, we have to wait for actual results. For today’s business world, I would recommend a mixed approach of face-to-face plus virtual communication. In the beginning, face-to-face meetings are imperative to build up a team environment, and then one can proceed to virtual communication and use the technology to cut down on stress and traveling.

Bibliography
http://www.leadingvirtually.com/?p=53