The war in Iraq and the recent outbreak of SARS will prompt a boom in online business meetings, predicts a University of Calgary computer network specialist.

“All this stuff that’s bad for Air Canada is good for that type of technology,” said Tom Seto, the University of Calgary’s network services manager.

Last week, during a House of Commons committee meeting on the state of Canada’s airline industry, an Air Canada executive blamed the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre as a cause of the airline’s financial woes. According to reports, Air Canada, which has applied for bankruptcy protection, was burning $2 million a day. Major U.S. airlines have also experienced cash crunches.

Sales in online meeting technology have soared in Canada and the U.S., and companies have reported increases in online meeting activity since the attacks.

“People didn’t want to travel as much as they used to, but they still wanted to communicate with each other, other than by telephone – so teleconferencing took a big jump,” said Seto. “People wanted to change the way they could meet.”

Online meetings involve video conferences, in which participants can see each other face-to-face and talk to each other in real time; teleconferences, in which participants speak to, and hear each other; and/or data conferences, in which participants read, write and edit text, and draw and adjust images together. All three forms of online conferencing can occur at the same time.

“It takes a little bit of getting used to,” said Seto. “The camera on the Internet feels a little bit artificial and (people appear) a little bit stressed, but I think one will get used to that.”

World tensions aside, changes in technology have also spurred online meetings. Until about two years ago, online meetings could only be held if participants used specific hardware and software; however, universal standards now allow people to meet using different types of hardware and software, for example Macs and PCs.

The first online meetings were conducted on private systems through telephone lines, limiting the number of groups that could participate. However, advances in cable systems and other high-speed connections have enabled developers to create Internet-based systems that are cheaper and more easily accessible through a universal standard known as H.323.

As a result of the new Internet-based systems, computer manufacturers can now offer online meeting software – for example, Microsoft Net Meeting – as part of a computer’s standard software package.

“Bandwidth has gone down in price,” said Seto, referring to the speed with which online meeting systems can connect to a network. “Secondly, people are willing to pay for it now.”

Online meeting systems are still not cheap – ranging from $30,000-$40,000 – but private sector and public sector organizations alike appear confident that they can recoup their costs through reductions in travel and other expenses. The U of C’s Faculty of Social Work invested $100,000 to install systems at the main campus in Calgary and satellite campuses in Lethbridge, Edmonton, Slave Lake, Grande Prairie and Red Deer.

“Considering the amount of travelling that was taking place between our divisional offices and the need to reach out to our BSW (Bachelor of Social Work) Access students throughout the province, the faculty realized the cost of purchasing and using video conferencing equipment made economic sense,” said Bob Middelmann, systems administrator for the faculty.

“For smaller organizations, I can certainly see that it may be more feasible to rent the technology as the need arose.”

The universities of Calgary, Alberta and Lethbridge and provincial colleges, along with most other post-secondary institutions across the country, have offered distance learning programs based on online meeting technology for the past few years. However, there are signs that online meetings will take off here in the near future.

Calgary-based Smart Technologies, the developer of an interactive whiteboard known as the SmartBoard, which has become popular in classrooms and boardrooms and can be used online, is expanding at a rapid rate.

The company has reported 40-per-cent growth in the past five years while selling products in 65 countries.

Meanwhile, the government-backed Alberta SuperNet will provide Internet connectivity between rural communities and cities, giving more people more opportunities to meet online.

“Just go and ask someone in any organization of any size and chances are they’ll have (an online meeting system),” said Seto.

He also predicts a growth of one-on-one online meetings through wireless personal digital assistants, known as PDAs, which are now equipped with camera cards.

However, it’s doubtful that large group meetings will be held via PDAs because the device’s screens are too small.