Facetime vs. Face to Face

I came across a little joke: 

At the Pearly Gates, St. Peter introduces Steve Jobs to Moses. Says St. Peter, "Moses, meet Steve. He's gonna upgrade your tablets." 

As wonderful as technology is, it will not have the power to “upgrade” the Ten Commandments.

In fact, I am going to share a story that lets us know the blessing and the shortcoming of technology. Most of us have on our smart phones that facetime or skype on them. These applications can let you see the person to whom you are speaking. When I first moved here, it was somewhat cool to show a colleague what our new home and back yard looked like. I do not use such applications much, but when I do, I am always glad that I had it.

Sometimes, such applications allow amazing things to happen.

A little boy, 7 years old, was suffering from a rare and aggressive brain cancer. He was restricted to his hospital bed in Rhode Island, but wanted desperately to sing his favorite song, "Walk This Way," with rock star Steven Tyler. I had to remind myself of this song, easy to do on the Internet. I could not understand the words, so I looked up the lyrics. After reading them, I must say that I am not sure a 7-year-old should have that as a favorite song. I know it makes me sound old and no fun, but oh well.

In any case, you might think “No way?” for this boy to sing his favorite song with Steven Tyler. In reality, no problem. Through a Skype video call, 7-year-old Cole Grace and Aerosmith front man Steven Tyler recently connected for a one-hour conversation. They also shared a special performance of "Walk This Way," and Tyler gave a shout-out to Grace from his seat as a judge on American Idol. Said Grace after the video meeting, "It felt pretty awesome."

Here is the sad part. The boy would die about five months later.

Modern technology can make some truly amazing connections, across continents and around the globe. In the world of business, virtual meetings have become increasingly popular because they save time and money while offering flexibility in location and timing.

However, is there a case for face to face?

Steve Manicor of bigIDEASblog questions whether web conferences and virtual meetings can replace the value of face-to-face contact. He cites a Forbes study from the summer of 2009 involving more than 750 businesses. The study revealed that face-to-face, in-person meetings go deeper than webinars and virtual events. In fact, 80 percent of the executives said they prefer face-to-face contact to virtual meetings. Such executives believe that in-person meetings are superior for achieving almost every business objective, including persuasion (91%), leadership (87%), engagement (87%), inspiration (85%), decision-making (82%), accountability (79%), brainstorming (73%), and strategy (73%).

You can make a strong case for face to face. Business executives prefer it. I imagine most other people do was well, including Cole Grace of Rhode Island.

Think about it.

Singing from his bed into a computer was cool, but he really wanted to be onstage with his rock idol Steven Tyler.

Even for me, as much as I enjoyed seeing my colleague on the phone, walking around the house and the yard, and so on, I would much rather have had him and his wife here. I could have shown him our new place. We could have gone out to eat.

I imagine that some of you have gotten used to skyping with children and grandchildren around the country, and maybe even the world. Yet, as wonderful as it all is, I can also imagine that every time this happens, most of us think that real face time is better than virtual face time.