In message , at 16:22:00 on 
Thu, 26 Jun 2008, Frank Erskine  remarked:
>It seems amazing in this day and age that people have to travel
>hundreds of miles (indeed any miles) to physically go to meetings when
>they could be 'meeting' electronically, saving loads of money and
>fuel.

I'm on my way back from a week-long meeting where one of the hot topics 
was how to make "remote participation" in that meeting better, and how 
to conduct better teleconferences and so on in between meetings. It is 
an entirely non-trivial task, and has defeated many attempts. One of the 
most difficult problems is providing translation into six(ish) languages 
on a teleconference. If you have any bright ideas, I know some people 
who are going out to tender with big bucks to try to solve this.

(And this all has to work on minimal connectivity, so no video is 
allowed).
-- 
Roland Perry