ViaVideo, My Foot

I love videoconferencing. I think it improves communication over phone or email and provides a way for people to get together no matter where they are.

However, I have to live with the contrary thoughts: I love videoconferencing, AND it is an absolute pain to do it 99% of the time.

Today I have a meeting to join where I thought I could just pop on our Polycom Camera, which ordinarily works like a dream. However, after almost four hours of tinkering, it looks like I'm going to have to mooch Karen's QuickCam and use it instead. It turns out that the conferencing system we'll be using doesn't like my Polycom camera. Arg!

If it's not the camera, it's the firewall, or the lack of RAM on the PC, or something. Whenever I do video, I'm so enthused about the promise and then so annoyed at the process of getting it to work.

I just want to wail, "Why can't we all just get along?"