Does video conferencing work for delivering training courses?  The last two days proved it does.

We worked with a small business unit with employees in London and Chicago.  For two London afternoons and Chicago mornings, a small group gathered in London and connected to Chicago via a video link.  The sophisticated system mirrored the presentation materials, and each group could see the other.  Of course there were momentary glitches, and some hilarious moments when a piece of paper held to the camera substituted for a white-board.

The limited timezone overlap forced the training to be split into a series of half-day sessions.  All the participants remarked on how useful this was as:
(1) it was less disruptive to their day-to-day jobs, and
(2) they were refreshed and able to absorb more of the second session.

While nothing beats face-to-face training, the video format proved to be a cost-effective method to train small numbers in disparate locations.