“Most people still experience online collaboration as a formal session where a bunch of people arrived at a predetermined time and passively view a scripted presentation.

Those uses are important, but most of the collaboration that goes on in organizations is much more spontaneous and varied.

We think there is a tremendous opportunity to support those informal conversations both by making it easier to find the right person and then by making the meeting more productive by being able to use video and data as well as voice.“

With many up-to-date, fresh and forward-looking answers such as the above one, Chuck Digate, CEO and President of Convoq, rapidly extinguished the barrage of critical questions that I had submitted to him only 24 hours before.

Chuck Digate is the first to appear in this new set of interviews dedicated to the future of online collaboration that will populate the pages of Kolabora.com and Robin Good’s MasterNewMedia in the coming three months.

Presence awareness, competition, interoperability, open standards, handicaps and opportunities for small companies like Convoq are some of the interesting issues we touch upon in this interview.