21st Century Communications - iChat AV on Leopard

After a horrendous end to last year where I was working all the hours under the sun I had a chat with Julie (my wife) and decided that 2008 would be different* and that I'd only work 3 evenings a week (instead of 4+ evenings and all day on Sunday). Aside from the fact I've just taken on a large project so it's gone out of the window, changes had to be made.

So I started talking with a PHP developer I know about subcontracting some work out to him. He's a guy I trust to do a great job so in that respect I feel safe for the first time in letting an external developer have access to 'my code'. I know, I know, it's technically the client's code (well dual licensed) and it's not agile to consider ownership over code - but it's been my blood, sweat and tears that's gone in to it over the past 2+ years.

Initially we were communicating over email, SMS, MSN (using Adium as we both use MacBooks) and occasional brief phone calls (normally to say, 'Jump on MSN'). Then one day we decided to have a go at using iChat on Leopard. Well, everything before that point seems so primitive now. I don't know why I didn't just post him a stone tablet with the instructions chiselled on it!

Our typical evening development session is now run with a To-do list shared over Basecamp (although for private list functionality to work I've had to add him as a member of my company), then we video chat over iChat AV to discuss problems. Then we started Screen-sharing so he can see my screen (e.g. so I can show him how something looks in a browser) or I can see his (e.g. so I can see the code he's seeing and type on his screen to change the code to make my point clearer).

While screen-sharing it even maintains audio conversation and seems to prioritise it over the screen visual data (speech is always crystal clear, but sometimes the screen is blurry then fills with detail).

We also use git with it's amazing gitk visualisation so I can see what changes he made (in individual commits) and how they related to my push/pulls.

It's so much better communicating when you can see someone's face and hear their voice. Albert Mehrabian said that only 7% of a conversation takes place in the words used; 38% is in the tone of voice and 55% is in body language. Considering before iChat AV we mainly used text-based means we were only getting 7% of the communication intended (in fact probably less as MSN/IM tends to be a very brief/succinct communication method).

Anyway, I've yet to try a 3/4-way video conference (and now I'm on a 20Mb Virgin Media connection I should have enough bandwidth to support it) but it feels so 21st Century using modern technology this way - and I really feel like I'm feeling the benefit of it.