Size Matters

Video conferencing doesn't work. Phone conferences and webex are all second rate to being in the room with one person. Of course when you need to connect 20 people, these technologies help, but the underlying issue is size.

The issue with video conferencing is that even on a large screen TV, the people you are viewing are a percentage of their actual size. There was a fellow we used to video conference with who would be the only one in the room, so he'd zoom the camera in on his face. He joked around that he was doing the anchorman thing, but beyond the humor he was connecting with us better. At that size he was almost life size. You could see hesitation in his gestures or subtle recognition in his face while you spoke. Of course he was disconnected from us because there were a dozen two inch people on his screen.

We are aware of nonverbal communication, yet it seems we don't realize that size matters in nonverbal communication. Sure we have video, but at the normal video conference sizes it is like monotone speech. People are used to communicating with others of roughly the same size. We are probably attuned to the subtlties of nonverbal communication on that scale. While having people larger than life on the screen would be a mistake (it would seem strange to our eyes), we should strive for near life size.

B