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welcome to business english pod a great way to improve your english skills on the go.today you are going to listen to a business news article about virtual meetings.virtual in this case means computer generated.
IBM experiments with virtual meetings.IBM is using the virtual world of a website called second life as the next best thing to in person corporate meetings.
the venerable computer maker has established at least one virtual island in second life,a popular online virtual world.where it has hosted employee meetings.
earlier this month,for example,IBM held a virtual block party where people milled around a space called the sky pod.but this isn't the work of teenagers interning at ibm.
researchers are looking at the potential business impact of virtual worlds and online games.after attending the virtual meeting from ibm's hears ley labs in the UK last month.
irving LA dow ski berger ibm's vice president of technical strategy and innovation.said that the use of technologies such as virtual worlds reminded him of how IBM embraced the internet and e business a decade ago.
once more,we have the very strong feeling that this will have a huge impact on business society and our personal lives.although none of US can quite predict what that impact will be LED,ow ski berger wrote in his blog.
so jeff,why do you think IBM is experimenting with virtual meetings? well,I think a virtual meeting which is a meeting where people are not physically present at the same location.
can have a lot of advantages,it can save money for the company,it can make meetings easier to organize if people are in different places.
t even something simple like a telephone conference call is a kind of virtual meeting. OK,so we have telephone conferences everyone participates in telephone conferences. what could the advantages of a virtual meeting be?
you see people and a lot of communication is visual. yeah,nonverbal to our occasion,sure.and of course,it also has all the advances of telephone conference too cheap and safe time.
the word virtual day is very important in this articles used a lot. what are some other ways that we could use this term?to say it's almost like reality,you could say virtually like the real situational reality OK. so almost.
the same as the will.
it's the next best thing in factum. now that's next best thing,what to think of smith,well,the best thing,of course,is the best thing.
when we say next best thing,it's,it's almost as good. it's second best,yeah,second best,second preference,second preference,yeah,so give me some examples you could say,for example,the next best thing to flying to Paris is to take a train.
OK or uh,how about this a SONY laptop is the next best thing to an apple powerbook good?
let's talk about what it means to be speaking in person. this notion of in person,well,you could say that's the opposite of virtual reality when you have people meeting in person.
it means that they're actually in the same location. they're facing each other,you know,they're actually there,OK ay,physically in the room at the same time,yeah,so for example.
you would say I had to attend last weeks meeting in Frankfurt in person because our CFO was presenting our latest financial results.
this means you went. this I was actually there,and then they're talking about IBM,and they use the adjective venerable.
to describe IBM well venerable is really a word that means the same thing as old,but it has a different feel to it,a different connotation if you say that a person is venerable.
it means not just that they're old,but that they're also highly respected. OK,so it's a bit more positive than just saying,oh,right?
okay,so maybe in this case I mean IBM is a very respected company because of its achievements and because of its long history,all right?
um,anyone want any examples how we can use venerable? well,you can use it about people,not just companies and talk about someone being venerable,a venerable member of congress,for example. okay,so that's like a respected member,yeah.
has been in congress a long time,you still have the basic meaning of old but with a positive tone to it,so it said IBM hosted a meeting to host something,what would that mean?
well,this is a verb that actually comes from and now you could say that a person or an organization is the host of a meeting,meaning that they are in charge or they are organizing the meeting.
but nowadays I think you can use it as a verb as well to say to host an event OK so to like hold the meeting go on.
for example,you could say we hosted the project team from our Japanese partners when they visited our rand d center and.and in this case,they they hosted a block party.
this is an American term for a party for the people who all live on the same street.and typically,they would close off the street and hold their party on it.
a block in the US refers to a short length of road between two cross streets,so it's kind of like a small community within a city,a group of neighbors who know each other and who want to organize a local event.嗯。
because it's informal people just milled around,they didn't have an agenda for the meetings. what about milled around? I think what it means is is people are moving around,not in a formal organized fashion.
but just talking to friends or just moving around in the kind of a social sense,OK? so for example.
uh,we just milled around the room shaking hands until we SAT down for dinner. well,you could say something like a factory to it was organized,but.
once we were there,we just milled around the reception area for a while. they've also said that this block party was not just the work of teenagers interning at ibm.
now this is another word that's a little bit like host. it was originally a noun and intern is somebody usually a young person.who works for a company or an organization May be not for very much money or not for any money.
but now you can also use intern as a verb meaning to work as an intern. okay,so what they're saying is that while it wasn't in formal nation,it was serious enough to not involve trainees,it was quite an important.
event right or it wasn't the trainees that set it up. it was probably their top research scientists that have been working on this so very serious.
sort of experiment,but done in an informal process,well it was an experiment that they did because they wanted to gauge the potential impact of this kind of virtual reality on their business practices and.
so the potential impact this means the likely or possible effect that virtual worlds could have on business the way that businesses conduct meetings,for example,yeah,the possible effect so,for example,you could say.
the potential impact of another rise in oil prices will be bad for the economy or you could say the potential impact of our new advertising campaign is huge a.okay.
when discussing new technologies,this is a word often used talking about embracing or in this case.呃，IBM embraced the internet。this is a word that has the basic meaning of holding something。
but here you could say it's being used in a different way. it means to show enthusiasm or support for a new kind of technology.in this case,and now they're embracing. they're becoming enthusiastic and.
about virtual reality,OK,so for example,our company has done well by embracing new technologies.
or the new merger proposal was embraced by the shareholders very enthusiastic,in english,when you add the letter e to an noun to the beginning of an noun,it gives the idea of electronic so.
soe business means electronic business. it's pretty common these days for businesses to put a small e in front of the name of a product or a.
service to suggest that it's mostly available on the internet. I think most people would be aware of the term email ecommerce.
okay for example we switched to e billing last month for all our online orders,where our company has embraced e business to lower costs.
all right,at the end of the article by quoting the vice president at ibm stating his opinion about the potential impact.
of this new technology on that business,and you wrote about it in a blog. now,what is a blog exactly a blog is what used to be two words?
it started as web log,in other words,we run together and they ran it together,so they just abbreviated made it shorter and said blog.
so then,what was the log? a log is a series of comments and things that are arranged by time,so a record,a record of people's comments almost like a diary,a diary,yeah,of many people,many different people to.
so this is a logo on the web. it's an online diary,we're an online journal,you hear people talk about blogging and the.
or a blogger,a person who keeps a blog you could say,for example,I wrote a blog or I kept a blog about my travels in south America.
or blogging is very popular and trauma,which it is ok and indeed we will have our own blog up and running soon on business nglishpaughtcom.thank you for listening to business english pod,we'll be back next week with a new podcast.