I went to the Wainhouse Research Summit recently. This was a great event focusing on trends and technologies affecting conferencing and
unified communications, including audio, video, IM, and social networks.

The keynote was Andrew Lippman, a professor from MIT’s Media Lab and an expert on digital life and viral communications. He gave a very enlightening talk on surviving in a digital world.

Other topics throughout the show included telepresence, video conferencing at the Federal Reserve Bank, telework, distance education technologies, social networking and how video applications have caused business transformation.

The video clip below shows highlights of some of the exciting technologies at the show.

View Wainhouse Research webcast archive

[audio:http://www.netbriefings.com/podcasts/Wainhouse08podcast_audio.mp3]

I recently wrote an article on getting started with video for marketing and sales and thought it would be a good blog posting. The full article is available at MarketingProfs.

Can you believe Google paid $1.6 billion dollars for YouTube? How could that be?

Well, it’s quite simple, really. Video is the most powerful communication medium we have, unless we’re actually in a room with someone, and YouTube put the tool of video communication over the Web into the hands of the common folk.

In doing so, the site’s popularity soared and marketers everywhere clamored to get in on the action.

But YouTube isn’t the only game in town. For marketers truly interested in putting video communication to good use, the key to getting the job done is finding the right tools.

Do you want to record a video message for on-demand access? Do you want to do live video from a large meeting, conference, or other event? Do you want more than just video, such as text chat, polling, Q&A or PowerPoint slides alongside your video? Do you need to secure access to an employee webcast or an online seminar you’re charging for? read more…

I thought I would pass along a great article I found in BusinessWeek about corporate use of blogging, Facebook, Twitter and other social networking tools. By the way, what exactly is Twitter? I thought I was an early adaptor of technology, but I have just recently been introduced to this new thing called Twitter. And believe it or not, I think it has an important place in network nurturing.

Anyways, this is a follow up piece to an article they wrote back in 2005 entitled “Blogs Will Change Your Business.” The new article talks about how these new social media technologies are changing the way “millions forge relationships and alliances… These social connectors are changing the dynamics of companies around the world.”

A video is also available as part of the article. Check out what Stephen Baker has to say.  <BusinessWeek article / video>