A virtual meeting is an inter-active web event. Some preparation can make such meetings increasingly relevant and effective. Clarity of goals and precise framing of opening statements will make the virtual meeting very effective, even within a short time span.
It is also necessary to understand the relation between a web, virtual meeting and the techniques of interpersonal communication to be able to conduct good virtual meetings. This is because inter personal communication refers to exchange of thoughts, feelings and ideas between individuals. One of the advantages of inter personal communication is that, in a majority of instances, the individuals who communicate with each other are able to see each other. This makes for visual clues that will speed up the communication process.
Conferences can be seen as a group of inter personal communication events that take place in the same back ground. Here, each instance of inter personal communication can also be seen to be engaged in communication with other similar instances. Using the set language, so beloved of mathematicians, it can be said that the each instance of an inter-personal communication here is a sub set of the conference. The conference itself is a super set made up of similar instances of inter personal communication instances.
Inter personal communication has been defined as a cyclical event. The speaker encodes a message on a channel, which reaches the hearer, who decodes it and understands the message. In turn, the hearer then becomes the speaker and encodes his response on the channel. In the second instance, the former speaker becomes the new hearer who will then decode the message.
In short, inter personal communication, and thus conferences in general, are a set of cyclical exercises where information passes from one unit to the other through a channel. One unit encodes a message while the other unit will have to decode it. When the channel involved is the internet, the conferences can be called as web conferences. This is because the internet is also called as the World Wide Web.
In web conferences, each speaker will have to encode his message and responses in the inter net in the form of text messages or graphics. These messages use the channel of the internet for transmission. In the next part we will discuss how the concept of web conference integrates all the strengths of inter personal communication exercises.
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