Lean and active virtual meetings

Virtual meetings - real-time collaboration between people in separate locations - can be greatly enhanced by centering on the mobile phone, a device many people carry with them everywhere. The concept Lean and active virtual meetings has been developed to resolve many of the problems and issues faced by users of today\´s virtual meeting technology. Such issues include cumbersome login procedures and difficulties for on-the-move, mobile-phone-only participants to be active and make an impact. The idea is to evolve the concept gradually from currently existing voice conferencing into the full concept where meeting participants use their mobile phone for all meeting functions, in particular authentication, conference audio and document sharing support. Concept tests reveal that intended target user groups find the concept credible, addressing relevant "pain-points" and containing many interesting services. Ease of use is of particular importance. A prototype based on Java and UMTS has been developed that demonstrates some key functionalities, such as simple meeting start and participant status list. We now continue to explore the concept from an end-user, a business and a technology perspective. The prototype will be further developed towards the full concept and used for more extensive user trialing. For long-term implementation IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) is of key interest.