5/72.4.3 Groupware to Support Face-to-face Meetings
When talking about computer conferencing, one could take it for granted that the members of the conference have to be separated geographically. But, in fact, the tools which are used for computer conferencing can also be very useful for problem solving in traditional face-to-face meetings. In the Colab (collaboration laboratory) [S+88] every participant had a workstation connected to a personal computer. Besides the workstations, the room was equipped with a large touch-sensitive screen and a stand-up keyboard. The Colab tools were used for brainstorming, organising and evaluation. A similar idea of using computers in certain kinds of face-to-face meeting is proposed in Lecturing Technologies of the Future [LM94b].A major benefit of computer conferencing tools in a face-to-face meeting is the huge data access available. In fact, you can access data that has not been foreseen for the meeting [SG88].