How Important Is Meeting In Person?

Those of you who have been following the CIO Priorities series by Narayanan Raman may have noticed that several CIOs are aggressively adopting video collaboration, telepresence, and other kinds of remote technology-based communication paradigms.

Personally, I am a big believer in not traveling gratuitously for business, and I generally do not like conferences unless they are very small, intimate, and targeted. (I do enjoy speaking at events. . .) And much as I have a passion for pleasure travel, I really do not enjoy extensive business travel very much anymore unless it is to a destination where I have other interests — friends, family, or simply a place that I wish to see (e.g., I recently got an invitation to come to Egypt to get to know the country’s efforts in becoming a technology outsourcing destination; and I love to go to places like Buenos Aires and Paris, and having a business reason to do so is always wonderful!)

But here is a different point of view from Matt Marshall, Editor of VentureBeat. He says, he likes to dance with people at DEMO, something you cannot replicate online. I can relate with this, except, what I like to dance is usually not danced at conferences!

And another counterpoint from Max Kim Tobiasen, Dreamers and Doers: “Dreamers go to conferences, meetups and other events to talk about their great startup. Doers stay at home and finish one more thing or close one more deal.” Max has a point, too. . . conferences take up a lot of time.

So. What is your perspective? I am curious because tomorrow, I am going to write a Forbes column on our findings from the CIO priorities series, and I would love to get your insights.