Sitting in judgement

In case you haven't noticed we are in the middle of the awards season that bridges the Christmas period and runs well in to the New Year.

I'm not sure why, but I'm a sucker for awards panels and have sat on quite a few, including the CBI's Human Resources Awards, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation's individual recruiter awards and the Work Foundation's Workworld Media awards.

I was judging this last one earlier this week. It's good to look at journalism with a more critical eye rather that simply reading a story or feature for its news, information or entertainment value.

Another good thing about awards judging is that you get to hear all kinds of juicy gossip but because this is picked up in what has to be a confidential discussion I don't get to repeat it anywhere (except in other gossipy behind-doors exchanges). That's the thing about gossip - everyone loves it but no-one likes to see it attributed to them, particularly since, by it's very nature,it lacks detail and sometimes accuracy. But what it loses in accuracy, it gains in emotional content. When people relax and chat together you get to understand how they feel about things.

Without going in to detail, it was clear from our conversations yesterday that there are worries about standards, not just among journalists but also in business. One of my fellow judges complained that newspapers were not holding chief executives to account for business failures.

I was surprised as I thought business leaders had come in for a hard time in the press recently. Not hard enough, it seems, but there is plenty of time for that. This week's "loan shares" scandal involving David Ross, the co-founder of Carphone Warehouse is just the tip, I suspect, of a very big iceberg (it's no big deal, says Luke Johnson). By this time next year we might even need a "financial scandal of the year award." Expect some fierce competition.

Seeing eye-to-eye at Cisco

I visited Cisco's UK headquarters in Feltham today to try out its TelePresence conferencing system. It really was as good as I had heard it was.

All the things that have dogged video conferencing systems in the past - lack of eye contact, voice delays, detached voices - have been put right in this system. Yes, It's expensive at more than $300,000 for the top end of the range but competition will bring the price down over time.

Also I think this system is ideal for the rental market and can imagine pay-per-use conferencing facilities popping up all over the world.

Using this system in Cisco requires some time discipline because of its popularity. Demand is so high that meetings are booked by the hour. This means that there is an incentive to get on with the business in hand.

Technology works best when you hardly notice it and you soon forget that you are not sharing the same room with everyone else in the meeting. Indeed the sound quality is so good you can engage with people in just the same way as you would face-to-face.

Yes you still need to book a meeting just as you would arrange any meeting but the savings in air travel are such that it wouldn't take much use in a big company to justify the expense.

This system and other systems like it have enormous potential for remote working. This is just the beginning. While faster and cheaper air travel helped bring the world together, there was a price to pay in fuel and fatigue. Today we're coming together without leaving our offices. Tomorrow we'll do so without leaving our homes.