This paper emanates from a series of fifteen intensive one to one interviews with conferencing and collaboration industry experts and influential thought leaders across business, education and scientific sectors. A range of issues related to the future directions of the conferencing and collaboration (C&C) field were raised, including technical, social, organisational and educational.
Our research acts as a forecast into the short and long term directions for the C&C field as predicted by current practitioners and users. It compiles information from open-ended interviews, which had no initial fixed agenda: rather than providing a set of pre-designed questions to interviewees, we merely provided high-level topics to address. We sought to avoid pre-determining or directing themes or potential outcomes. These interviews have led to the compilation of key concepts, ideas and requirements that may not have been identified if there were a more formal interview process used.
C&C is a rapidly evolving field, stemming ultimately from developments in groupware and the academic field of computer-supported co-operative work (CSCW) in the 1980s and 1990s. We begin our paper by briefly summarising the roots of modern C&C, as well as appraising the key platforms, technologies and businesses in this space today.