Meetings galore

One of the things that happens at the beginning of a new school year is a bunch meetings - department meetings, college meetings, student meetings, other meetings with colleagues. But that is just part of academia, and it is of course extremely important to meet with students, because as my dean said, one of our most important jobs is to prepare the next generation of researchers. I'm very fortunate to have a lot of good students. We're here at the university to research but also teach.
It's funny that even how far technology has come, face to face meetings are the way things get done. I wonder if western governors or the university of phoenix - totally online universities - also have face to face meetings. Online conferences are making some headway, but even this conference on elearning is held face to face:
http://www.aace.org/conf/ELEARN/
It seems online conferences would be good especially given the current economic environment, and it would also help the environment since hundreds or thousands of people would not have to be flying across the country or the world to the same place at the same time. But I must admit seeing someone in person is very different from seeing him/her on a computer screen. Seeing colleagues in person helps to build collaborations, which is what we as university professors need to do. You can't build a truly successful research program entirely by yourself. Will videoconferencing or other technologies bring us to the point where we could have online conferences in which you can build collaborations in the same way? My guess is right now if you don't already know the potential collaborator, that would be hard. But who knows what future technologies will afford.