Press Release - State of the Modern Meeting Vol 2 -uk

International report shows video-centric collaboration improves business relationships as modern meetings become virtual, mobile and finally…productive

Jan 7, 2014— London, UK – The increased use of technology in the workplace continues to change the professional meeting process, with a third of all meetings now including a participant on a mobile device and the continued rise of video conferencing, according to cloud-based video collaboration provider Blue Jean Network’s bi-annual State of the Modern Meeting Report, released today. Cloud-based video conferencing has grown explosively, with usage of the Blue Jeans service up nearly 400 percent in the last year.

Compiled using data from more than 1 million Blue Jeans customers in 177 countries and a survey of 391 business decision makers, the report benchmarks trends in collaboration and demonstrates how technology is reshaping meetings throughout the world.

There is intriguing insight into the ways different regions and groups of people collaborate and attend meetings. The UK for example meets for longer hours than the rest of the EU, starting meetings as early as 7am each day and only winding up at 9pm. Our European counterparts rarely meet before 8am or after 6pm. Despite their hardworking nature, it appears meetings aren’t always the first priority for Brits. Major sporting events generally cause a significant drop in UK meeting productivity. During Wimbledon for example, there was a 15% drop in weekday meetings across the country – a trend likely to be replicated during the Football World Cup next year.

Within the UK, Scots hold longer meetings, averaging 46 minutes compared with 38 minutes in the South and 36 minutes in the North of England. The report also shows that certain cities are more connected than others. While London unsurprisingly tops the leader board, Cambridge, Glasgow and Northampton make up the rest of the big four – ousting other heavy weights such as Manchester and Liverpool. London also takes the top ranking in Europe according to the report, followed by Munich, Paris, Dublin, Madrid, and Berlin.

The report shows the majority (59%) of all meetings start late, with CEOs, CTOs and founders perhaps surprisingly the most likely to join a meeting after everyone else. Despite their habitual lateness, high level executives along with product managers and salespeople average the most meetings per week. Executive and administrative assistants and those in the legal department participate in the longest meetings. Women are the Queens of the modern meeting, attending 14% more meetings than men (up from 11% six months ago) and are 12% more likely to attend meetings on weekends than their male counterparts.

Other key statistics from the report include:

• No Face Time, No Deal: Nearly three quarters (71%) of people believe they lost a deal due to the lack of face-to-face interaction and 6% have admitted to falling asleep during an audio-only meeting.
• Conferencing Is Converging: Meeting owners are tiring of having to decide in advance whether a meeting will be an audio conference, video conference, or web conference, and are instead choosing converged conferencing solutions like Blue Jeans that integrate all of the above. 39% of video-centric meetings also have at least one audio-only participant, up from 35% in June. 30% of video-centric meetings include screen/content sharing for presentations, documents, or video-clips, up from 26% in June.
• Skip Skype with the Web: Desktop and laptop users are increasingly skipping proprietary solutions like Skype for the ease and ubiquity of the web browser thanks to technology advancements like WebRTC. Today, 90% of Blue Jeans desktop/laptop participants use a browser.
• Meeting the Holiday Hangover: While there is a 60 % reduction in meetings the day before a holiday, the meeting bill comes due with a 118% increase in meetings the day after a holiday. Q1 2014 is poised to be the busiest meeting season of the year with the post-holiday spike and 25 % more meetings taking place in February than any other time of the year.
• The Meeting World Is Flat: Companies and professionals are collaborating across the globe most frequently between Singapore, San Francisco, Prague, Dubai and New York. The US and UK connection is particularly strong with meetings taking place even on major US holidays (77% of normal meeting volume maintained with UK during US holidays).
• No Travel, No Trouble: In 2013, winter storms resulted in 20 percent more meetings than a typical day. The total distance of travel saved in 2013 by Blue Jeans was 3.5 billion kilometres – the equivalent to over 9,100 trips to the moon or 12 billion lengths of Oxford Street.
• Timing Is Everything:
  • An average business meeting lasts 45 minutes and has nearly 5 participants.
  • Nearly one-half of meetings take place between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. and most workdays conclude by 10 p.m.
  • 41% of meetings take place on Tuesday and Wednesdays, which are the most popular meeting days of the week.
  • Weekend meetings have declined by more than a third in the past six months, from one in 10 to one in 15 meetings occurring on the weekend.
  • Professionals are taking back the lunch out with a 20 % decline in meetings from noon to 1 p.m.
  • Mobile traffic spikes in the evening and morning, with three times more participants joining at 6 p.m. versus 5 p.m. on their mobile devices and two times as many at 7 a.m. versus 8 a.m.

Commenting on the findings, Blue Jeans Network chief commercial officer Stu Aaron said: “There has been a monumental shift in the way meetings are being conducted. If an in-person meeting is not an option, more than half of business professionals prefer a video meeting over an audio-only meeting. This new way to collaborate means that bad weather, budget cuts, holidays and a geographically scattered team are no longer threats to business productivity as you can easily conduct face-to-face meetings with nearly any device – from any location.”

For more information about Blue Jeans Network and the State of the Modern Meeting, including an infographic on the data, visit https://www.bluejeans.com/modern-meeting/uk.

State of Modern Meeting Methodology
The report is based on more than one million participants who used Blue Jeans Network for meetings from 177 countries across all seven continents.

*National survey of 391 business decision makers conducted on behalf of Blue Jeans Network by Instant.ly in November of 2013.

About Blue Jeans Network
At Blue Jeans Network, our mission is to make video communications as easy and pervasive as audio communications, enabling more effective collaboration at work, at home, and on the road. Our cloud-based conferencing service makes this possible by enabling customers to connect with each other seamlessly any time, anywhere, and from practically any device. The Blue Jeans Network extends high quality video communications beyond the traditional boundaries of specialized conference rooms and into the mainstream, allowing individuals and employees throughout an enterprise to interact more effectively with each other, and with their customers, partners, suppliers, family, and friends. Blue Jeans Network is a private company headquartered in Mountain View, California. For more information go to: https://www.bluejeans.com or follow the company @BlueJeansNet

Morgan Mathis
Highwire for Blue Jeans Network
415-963-4174 x37
morgan@highwirepr.com