REMOTE LINKS: THE FUTURE OF BIZ MEETINGS

Sreekala G, December 8, 2008
The Economic Times (Bangalore edition)

This could well be an answer to those terror elements trying to target business establishments. So, if your business meeting plans got cancelled due to security reasons don’t lose heart. Thanks to ‘remote participation’ tools you can virtually attend all meetings provided you have a computer and network. It can help you save travel cost and avoid jet lag.

While remote participation as a concept has been used by many corporates for quite some time the Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad has established it as an effective tool to ensure participation from across the world in the wake of the recent Mumbai terror attack.

According to IGF officials, remote participation also helps those who should have the largest voice in these proceedings but who do not or cannot attend for a variety of reasons. “This will help increase developing country involvement and input in the IGF process. It will also offer a more flexible approach to full, part-time or topic specific participation and observation to the process,” said Markus Kummer, executive co-ordinator, IGF.

An official from the IT&C department in Delhi also confirmed that many participants cancelled their journey to Hyderabad due to security problems. “However, the overall participation at IGF may not be affected as they will be connected to the forum through net,” he had said.

IGF is using open source software developed by Dimdim for remote participation through web conferences. In India, the remote hub for virtual participation is set up by Zensar Technologies in Pune. As Dimdim’s software is open source, people could access it without paying high charges. Additional infrastructure required for remote participation was net connection, a computer and a web camera.

“Worldwide IGF has about eight remote hubs and in India it has only one. The remote hub operating out of the Europe Asia Business School has helped almost 500 people participate at the IGF held in Hyderabad through the net,” said Nikhil Aggarwal, director of Zensar Technologies & Europe Asia Business School. According to him, Zensar has decided to provide technical support to IGF’s remote participation to create awareness among IT fraternity on Internet governance. “Our employees have also conducted awareness programmes in various IT campuses in Pune,” he said. Though the company does not want to build a business model around remote participation, it is looking at associating itself with various other upcoming IT events in the country. “About 1,200 delegates physically participated at the IGF in Hyderabad, we expect over 10,000 participants to get connected through remote participation,” he said. Through remote participation, people can raise their suggestions and queries with a moderator sitting in Hyderabad on a real time basis.