Conferences & events are for information dissemination. The need for that now is greater than ever. Leaders have the opportunity to get ahead of the misinformation curve and to communicate clearly with their stakeholders.

I expect that conference organizers & marketing departments are busy scrambling their boardrooms thinking about canceling their upcoming conferences. But maybe this presents an opportunity for us to think about how we use this public health crisis to create a new culture of conferencing.

industrial revolution complex of managing people aides our strategies. Fast forward 10 years, and the Coronavirus, in my mind, presents an equally clear & present danger. It is forcing executives (more specifically HR) to finally reconsider how this 2.

There is often a disconnect between the intent of a company and how it behaves.

century ICT infrastructure to enable the business to be more agile. Personal story: some years ago my private equity company held some of the unlisted stock in a listed retail & financial services business. I vividly remember an audit & risk sub-committee meeting where we spoke about the clear and present dangers of hosting online meetings and sharing information that was confidential and price sensitive. My view was that we needed to embrace the emergence of new technologies & find a way to protect the data being shared rather bar the use of the technologies. My fellow board members — particularly those that came from an audit background — felt that the risk was too high. It’s worth noting that the company had just appointed a Head of Strategy, amongst whose responsibility was the development of a 21

I am old enough to remember a time when Skype was considered a disruptive technology & Risk Managers of large companies worried about the transfer and sharing of sensitive company information over an online video platform.

My point: This is the problem with mathematical extrapolation that uses historical data as a base point of analysis. Your point of view uses an obsolete & broken lens.

At the time, we all thought that the economic fundamentals of virtual reality did not support the valuation.

The world thought tech valuations & global tech giant CEOs had gone crazy when Mark Zuckerberg bought virtual reality start-up Oculus-VR for a breezy $3bn in 2017. At the time, the rationale for the transaction was that this gave Facebook the ability to create virtual meeting rooms for their ecosystem of users. The network effect of this move was that billions of people could now meet, share ideas & experiences in a virtual room without leaving their homes or offices.

I have compiled a list of online video conferencing tools that you can use to communicate and maintain your teams’ momentum:

Great for a simple yet effective user interface. Zoom unifies cloud video conferencing, simple online meetings, and group messaging into one easy-to-use platform.

This has become my personal favourite. It connects desktops, mobile devices and room meeting systems on one platform. It is integrated with workplace collaboration tools that enable a seamless flow of information sharing.

A simple download and you’re ready to rumble. What I love most about this platform are the measures taken to secure your information & how you can recall that information and even the video conference itself, after the conference.

We use ZohoMeeting because it is integrated into our CRM. Great for me, when I am meeting with my sales team whilst off travelling the world.

I think that this platform will become more important in the near future. If you run an academy, training school or a masterclass and needs to do teaching remotely to more than one location, this is the platform I would recommend.

Vusi Thembekwayo
Global Speaker | Citizen of the Human Race