CLEAR CHOICE

When basketball coaches Mike Krzyzewski of Duke University and John Chaney of Temple were told in May that they would be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame on Oct. 5, they didn't have to travel far to speak with the local media.

Instead, the two gave face-to-face interviews to area reporters at the same time - Krzyzewski from his campus in Durham, N.C., and Chaney from his campus in Philadelphia - via the Joseph J. Deliso Sr. Videoconferencing Center at Springfield Technical Community College (STCC).

Later, when the Hall of Fame announced that Georgetown would take on Georgia in the 2001 Tip-off Classic this Nov. 19, the coaches of those two teams spoke with local reporters the same way.

"It's tremendous, because local media outlets get an opportunity to participate in a press conference without having to go to Duke or Temple or having to travel to Georgia or Georgetown," said Kim Lee, the Hall's senior director of marketing.

Clearly, videoconferencing is moving from a technological niche into the mainstream. Facilities like the Deliso Center bring people together not just to facilitate media coverage but to allow for longdistance business meetings, bring together faroff classrooms for shared learning, and enhance communication in fields ranging from law to medicine.

The advantages are obvious: the room at STCC may be rented for $300 per hour plus connection charges, a fraction of what it can cost to send one or more people to a long-distance meeting, considering the costs of airfare, hotels, meals, and other travelrelated expenses.

However, until the technology began to become more widely available, these were advantages without much practical use. Email followed a similar path as a technol ogy that had little, practical use until more people had access to it. Just as Email exploded as a business tool once it took over virtually every desktop, the videoconferencing scene is changing and growing as well.

A Springfield Connection

When the STCC technology park was...