Travel or Videoconference?

• How long will the meeting be? If it is a short meeting (i.e. 2 hours) it may not be worth driving 2 hours there and 2 hours back to make a face-to-face meeting.  However, if it is an all day meeting, 4 hours of driving might be worth it.
  
• Do you know the people you will be meeting with? If you have established a face-to-face relationship with at least the key players of a meeting, then it might be ok to videoconference in.  However, if you are wanting to establish a rerlationship with some new people for future dealings with them, then it might warrent the extra time and money to travel and meet them face-to-face
  
• Are others going to be videoconferencing in? If other sites are also going to video conferencing in (to create a multisite conference) or if you will have some of the meeting participants at your local videoconference end joining you, then that may be a good reason to videoconference.  You won't be the odd person out trying to interace with 15 others that have the face-to-face advantage.
  
• Are there other meetings or visits you can schedule to make the trip more worthwhile? If you can arrange for a second or third meeting in the same area, it may make more sense to forget videoconferencing and instead travel to all of your meetings in the same day or series of days.
  
• Are there other local appointments that you have either before and or after the scheduled meeting? If you have other meetings at your home location that require your presence then it makes sense to use video conferecing for the remote meeting.  This way you could teach a class in the morning, attend the required meeting in the afternoon via video conferencing, and watch your kids 4:30pm soccer game.
  
• Will the non meeting time provide value? Often the value in meetings extends beyond what is said in the official meeting.  Conversations before, during breaks, and after often provide more value than the meeting itself.  If there are people you would like to meet or discuss things with outside of the official meeting, then face-to-face might be better than videoconferencing.
  
• How much will I save if I videoconference instead of travel? Use the cost calculator to find out...