Is YouTube for the Enterprise Ready for Its Close Up?

For several years at least, experts have predicted that so-called YouTube for the Enterprise will be the next big thing in corporate communications. There are plenty of offerings in the space, but what do actual workers think of the idea? In broad research looking at use of video at work in several contexts, including videoconferencing and quick, YouTube-type videos for demonstration and training purposes, Forrester found 72 percent of those surveyed dont want desktop videoconferencing at work and generally concluded that many workers have a weak appetite for video including YouTube for the Enterprise. So is the technology ever going to live up to the hype and make a real impact on the way we work?

Paul Miller, founder of the Intranet Benchmarking Forum, for one, believes that when it comes to sharing short videos with organizations, the answer is yes. Speaking to WebWorkerDaily about the recent success of the IBF 24 event, he used the occasion to make a prediction about video:

In three years time we will see YouTube for the enterprise be something thats well established and well used in all major organizations for training, for communication, and it will be available and being used through smart phones and so on.

Miller went on to argue that YouTube shows that videos capture interest and attention that wo! rds simp le cant, and that video is always popular because its dynamic and fresh. And to those who are concerned about the governance and quality issues that unleashing an army of employees with Flip cameras might produce, Miller suggests that a natural learning process will solve these issues:

Governance around publishing standards eventually caught up with the written word on the intranet and the same will happen with video. You want to publish, great, but here are the quality standards technical specs, quality content levels it must meet, questions that you need to answer yes to before it will go live and some best practice videos that show what good looks like.

The future, according to Miller, involves video as the answer to everyday business issues and the challenge of sharing knowledge in a dispersed workforce. How should cabin crew on British Airways flights remove coffee machines that get stuck on long haul flights watch this clip for 60 seconds and you have your illustrated answer. What is the best way to handle an angry caller to a call center at AXA here is a call center manager talking you through the best approach, he offers as illustration. But Forrester paints a very different picture of reluctant employees resisting top down efforts to push video a work, saying the workforce overall has little interest in and access to desktop video.

Whose perspective do you find more convincing?

Image courtesy Flickr user Artotem

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