Virtual working... is not only adequate but in some instances absolutely necessary. Case in point: Recently, for a few dreaded moments, the hospital's clinical data system went down. In the not-too-distant past, Halamka's inclination would have been to call all the relevant parties together in person to figure out what went wrong. Instead, everyone -- meaning the critical folks in security, network operations, and the like -- remained at their desks, where they had access to key information, and jumped onto a conference call. The system was back up in 20 minutes. It would have taken that long just to get people in the room, Halamka noted.

“Many people have been killed going to meetings in Iraq.” It was an offhand remark made by a US military advisor in a casual conversation about virtual work -- its benefits, its pitfalls, its resisters, its committed participants. Until that moment, it had never before crossed my mind that traveling to a face-to-face meeting could be lethal.

What about you? Could you discharge less CO2, experience less stress, put yourself at lower risk, and make it cheaper all around by staying put? Last fall, The Content Economy, a Swedish blog, picked up on a suggestion on my blog to develop a checklist before traveling to the next face-to-face meeting. Here, for example, are a few questions from the checklist:

• Do you need a day or two of continuous work together?
• Do you have to share “things” that would be difficult to experience at a distance, like touring a facility or using a piece of equipment?
• Have you calculated the true cost of the meeting in terms of direct expenses and personal wear-and-tear?
• Have you done a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the meeting’s contribution to CO2 emissions?
• Do you sometimes travel because you like it or get the feeling that you are important for doing so? Is the meeting you’re planning one of those?

This is great, Jessica, but the list of reasons for f2f doesn't include the hard-to-calculate value of building relationship: the sociality, the chats during the breaks, the drink after the meeting, the early morning hike, not to mention the side chatter and body language that nothing virtual has the bandwidth to convey. I'm all for virtual (for all the above reasons, plus climate change and personal wear and tear), but I keep finding that sometimes nothing can replace face time. Sampson's flow chart ["Michael Sampson, a New Zealand collaboration specialist, who answered the question, 'When Do We Need Face Time?' with a flowchart"] gets close to including that, but doesn't quite get there.