It’s important for enterprises to recognize the limitations of Internet-mediated communication and collaboration. While the Web has transformed the way we work, there’s still no substitute for being there.

WWD’s Gunderloy points out – and I believe rightly so – that web working is not meant to replace the “face to face” in all situations, but is simply a new (or additional) way to connect where it might not be possible otherwise:

You won’t be herding cattle, bandaging wounds, or assembling televisions over the web. What you will be doing, we believe, is increasingly communicating and collaborating over the web in smart ways when it makes sense to do so. Web work doesn’t make physical proximity irrelevant, but it does reduce its importance in many cases, and gives us the tools to be productive in cases where proximity is inconvenient or impossible.

Although I happen to be sitting in a corporate office, behind a desk along with about 300 of my colleagues, I still consider myself very much a web worker. In fact, I’ve been doing it for nearly 10 years now. Not exclusively mind you – I do still have the occasional personal meeting with authors, vendors, and partners – and of course we have way too many “face to face” meetings here in the office. But the bulk of my job is done as a web worker:

1. I do topical research almost exclusively online. Be it blogs, conference videos (I’m watching Gnomedex live as I write this post,) online presentations and so on, most of what I need to learn about new and emerging topics I can find online.
2. I have worked with hundreds of authors over the years. Nearly all of them I met online first – that is if I ever meet them face to face at all. In fact, I would say that I have never met most of my authors face to face. I don’t think this makes these relationships any less real – I chat with them on IM almost daily, I follow and converse with them on their blogs, we speak on the phone or over skype, we converse via twitter, I have even met with them virtually in Second Life.
3. I have made hundreds of deals over the years and I’ve only signed contracts across a table in person a handful of times. Almost all of them are made and discussed using email and the methods I mention above.

I could go on, but the point is that web workers aren’t always sitting in a Starbucks looking for wi-fi, and the deals they make, the products they create and the work they do is no less real than what gets accomplished shaking hands at a convention. The difference may be in the speed, efficiency, and cost savings we generate in working the way we do.

I tend to think that Forbes got it right last week when they published their article entitled “How to Network Like a Pro Online.”

What do you think?

Photo credit: Pisco Bandito (which was a collaboration between 2 artists who have never met in person)