Executive time has become more precious. Companies have become more widely dispersed. Travel is more challenging than ever. As companies look to boost business productivity and manage costs, visual conferencing and online collaboration keep looking better and better. Fortunately, technology has evolved to the point where an employee working from home has the capability of being face-to-face with co-workers, bosses, customers, and vendors online – simultaneously – without ever hopping on a plane or sitting in traffic. According to the research firm Forrester, 34 million Americans are working from home at least part-time. If everyone who could work from home did work from home, it is estimated that the U.S. businesses would save an estimated $700 billion annually. As a result of technology and economic need, the number of employees working from home is expected to double before the end of the decade. This convergence of rising travel costs, unreliable air transportation, and falling “telepresence” costs will lead inevitably to a decline in business travel. That decline is coming at a time when the need to meet and collaborate is increasing, not decreasing. For all these reasons, I’m very pleased that my guest for this week’s show is J.W. Penland. J.W. is CEO at IOCOM, which just launched its revolutionary Visimeet technologies. Visimeet is a game-changer. It levels the already flattened playing field between small and large businesses and puts a leading-edge productivity tool onto the desktop of every employee and business owner. Tune in on Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 11 AM EDT when J.W. Penland joins me to talk about how visual communication solutions will change the way we do business. Who should listen? Executives, small business owners, health care providers, recruiters, HR, entrepreneurs.