I, OTOH, fly from NY to Houston and back every week. I'm not happy about it on environmental grounds (and Houston's not exactly a hotspot other than in temperature), but that's what the job requires.
I've found it becomes harder when the work trips aren't to conferences (plenty of which I've turned down including one to Australia) but are a more fundamental part of getting your job done. I've worked jointly on software with people elsewhere in Europe and meeting in person at least once does make a difference to how the work goes. Skype is only so good.
When it's in Europe and very directly for work it can feel quite a bit more awkward trying to make an environmental case, especially when the trip is a drop in the ocean of the overall travel for the project. In this particular case other factors also made it difficult to put forward a case convincingly, especially when I hardly live a totally puritan life from an environmental perspective. I suppose many decisions you can think about and weigh up from a personal perspective (such as working in a location that I need to drive to reach, flying to Italy for our honeymoon and using fuelling server rooms by using the internet extensively) whereas with work decisions you can't make those judgements in the same way. Which more broadly is probably why Tom's poll was rather interesting.
It does appear that the ideal equipment for remote conferencing is as close as the perfect ebook reader, which is to say perpetually just over the horizon.
Think the fundamental problem is that food/drink matters in building and maintaining relationships, and not possible to replicate virtually!
Was actually reading paper about some lab experiments on trust and different communication media (face to face, video conference etc) last week. Trust built over video or audio more fragile than that built face to face.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 07:03 pm (UTC)(My last gig was Zurich, which I much preferred!)
no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 07:56 pm (UTC)When it's in Europe and very directly for work it can feel quite a bit more awkward trying to make an environmental case, especially when the trip is a drop in the ocean of the overall travel for the project. In this particular case other factors also made it difficult to put forward a case convincingly, especially when I hardly live a totally puritan life from an environmental perspective. I suppose many decisions you can think about and weigh up from a personal perspective (such as working in a location that I need to drive to reach, flying to Italy for our honeymoon and using fuelling server rooms by using the internet extensively) whereas with work decisions you can't make those judgements in the same way. Which more broadly is probably why Tom's poll was rather interesting.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-13 09:39 am (UTC)It does appear that the ideal equipment for remote conferencing is as close as the perfect ebook reader, which is to say perpetually just over the horizon.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-13 04:12 pm (UTC)Was actually reading paper about some lab experiments on trust and different communication media (face to face, video conference etc) last week. Trust built over video or audio more fragile than that built face to face.