To Cisco's London offices where the networking giant has joined forces with BT to host a video conference-enabled roundtable bringing together attendees from Madrid, Dubai and, erm, Reading.

The subject for discussion is the results from a new academic study on the best practices firms should embrace to drive a successful environmental sustainability strategy. The findings of the study itself are hardly ground breaking (who would have guessed that a successful corporate sustainability strategy requires board level support, firm targets, action rather than words, and a commitment to incorporate the environment into the overarching business strategy), but the video conferencing technology on the other hand, now that was impressive.

I know it has become de rigueur for any journalist visiting one of these high definition video conferencing suites to come out and instantly file a story along the lines of "wow, this kit looks incredible", but seriously, wow, this kit looks incredible.

Having spent four years covering the IT industry and its infuriating tendency of promoting every incremental product improvement as something akin to the invention of the wheel and the discovery of fire combined, I am rarely impressed by any new gadget. But it is hard to stress quite how life-like the people on the high definition plasma screens are. You can tell the time by sneaking a peak at the watch of the academic opposite, you can admire the cuff links of the Cisco exec and if you are feeling mean you can pretty much count the grey hairs of your fellow attendees.

Personally, I am suddenly very conscious that I didn't shave this morning and silently musing on the fact that if this high definition kit takes off the biggest winners (alongside the likes of Cisco and HP who are selling it in the form of their respective TelePresence and Halo suites) are likely to be purveyors of executive grooming paraphernalia - the cameras really are that unforgiving.

I know I am beginning to sound like I'm on commission (I'm not), but after years of overstating the benefits of video conferencing those IT companies now claiming that these system have finally come of age are telling the truth this time.

However, if the technology is not that far short of flawless it is interesting to observe the extent to which the people using it have not yet caught up. All the teething problems evident throughout the call - and almost certainly repeated in teleconferencing suites the world over - could be directly attributed to the attendees, no doubt myself included.

So the conference starts with the volume set to low, is then interrupted by interference caused by one attendee leaving a mobile phone too near one of the microphones, and, due to the seats some of the speakers have chosen, is punctuated by the surreal site of the two attendees from Reading talking to the speaker from Madrid while apparently turning their backs on him.

Meanwhile, the fact that everyone is in plain view appears lost on at least one attendee who rather distractingly spends much of the call checking and re-checking their Blackberry.

The fact is that even many of those people familiar with video conferencing suites are yet to fully appreciate that this an entirely new form of communication that requires a new set of behaviours.

Video conferencing is not exactly akin to a face-to-face meeting, but it is closer to that than it is a simple telephone call and as a result the behaviours that are tolerated on phone calls - checking mobiles, tapping away on laptops, stifling yawns - are likely to alienate people on a video conference call.

The success of video conferencing technologies - underlined by BT's revelation yesterday that it saved over £200m and 97,000 tonnes of carbon last year through its use of 20 Cisco TelePresence suites - is at least partially dependent on the pace at which executives work out the optimum approaches for using the technology and it will be intriguing to see how quickly these best practices evolve.

Should people get the hang of video conferencing quickly, and there is no reason to believe that they won't, then the environmental, cost and quality of life case for the technology should ensure that it quickly becomes a common feature at large multinationals.

And if that does prove the case I'd recommend that the more image conscious amongst you add some moisturiser to the various accoutrements in your office desk drawer.