The Contribution of Audio Conferences to the Dematerialization of Meetings in the Age of the Web

摘要

The economic trend of reducing costs in companies and public administrations on the one hand and the renunciation of air travelling after the terror attacks in the United States on September 11th, 2001 on the other hand strengthen the tendencies to run audio, video or web conferences replacing face-to-face meetings. Prerequisite of this development was merging of telecommunication, information, multimedia, entertainment, and security technology - concisely: TIMES - and the deregulation of the telecommunication market. Before high technical and organisational prerequisites by all participants were required; now a growing number of service providers are is offering comfortable and less expensive alternatives. Apart from the enterprises' and public administrations' opportunities to save costs by teleconferences (instead of face-to-face meetings) another aspect is of great importance: The tiny use of resource by teleconferences is an important contribution to the protection of the environment. Our article focuses on the most used type of teleconferences: audio conferences. After introducing the key concepts we discuss the value-adding features of Web-based conference. A concrete example shows the possible dematerialization effects.