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To make people adopt virtual collaboration practices so that that virtual collaboration can become a norm for collaboration, virtual collaboration services such as web conferencing need to be designed in a way that doesn't make collaboration in physical workspace harder. If you think about it, it is really easier to have a face-to-face meeting if you can skip the part with preparing for and starting a virtual meeting session. There's all this technology equipment which never seems to work smoothly and where you need to plug things in. There need to be elements of spontaneity also in virtual meetings. That can only be achieved by making it really easy to start, run and participate in virtual meetings from whatever situation you are in, from any device, and whether or not you are inside corporate firewalls or not. 

 

What also needs to be done is to integrate physical workspaces with virtual workspaces in new and innovative ways. We should treat the virtual (or digital) workspace as an extention of our physical workspace, and vice versa (e.g. augmented reality). Today physical and virtual workplaces are designed separately, and as a consequence we are forced to do stuff either in the physical space or in the virtual space (from a computer or mobile device). There integration between the two is not smooth enough today.

 

If you want a good example of how to think more a more innovative way about how to do this integration between virtual and physical workplaces, take a look at this interactive whiteboard which is using a real whiteboard for capturing and communicating whatever is drawn or written in the whiteboard. What is more interesting is how you can interact with things on your computer via the whiteboard. 

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