As the person in charge of gathering the company's staff from different corners of the country, you've got to be asking yourself how you will to get them to a single conference center and keep company expenses at a minimum. Logically, everyone would be able to attend the conference at the same time to guarantee correct dissemination of information. Unfortunately, the cost of getting hundreds of people to attend a conference in the same city can often be prohibitive, particularly if you are organizing a conference between people from different countries.



You may have noticed the average cost of business-class tickets increasing of late, and one of the big reasons is thanks to advanced web technology. Video and web conferencing have dramatically reduced the need for people to travel to conferences, which in turn has been worrying airlines. As the technology continues to improve, many companies are shifting their conferences from being physical events, to ones run on web servers. This is also saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

The technology has come so far that it now allows real-time and streaming communication, which is is almost on the same level as face to face interaction. This has brought the coroporate community much closer as a result. The price of video conferencing has also recently come down, which makes it an even more viable prospect for companies wishing to adopt the technology.

In the 1990s, special equipment was usually required to have a video conference. But now, all that's needed is a broadband connection and a web browser. This has enabled many more people to start using video conferencing. And as well as being able to access the conference on the web, they can also now download recordings of past meetings from the web, too. Those that can attend are now able to watch it and real time, where ideas can be put forth, and brainstorming can take place through shared applications like polling and virtual whiteboards; as well, presentations can also be made through PowerPoint slides and other documentation which can be transferred to all participants with a minimum of hassle.

In Australia alone, video conferencing software such as Web Ex is used by over 11,000 businesses. The reduced travel this has allowed will have reduced the amount of carbon emitted by thousands of tonnes. Some of the more common users of Web Ex software are in the finance and IT sections, and they use it for marketing and training purposes.