Managing complexity: a Web seminar experience

This project provided a novel forum for the delivery of three presentations in the area of the management of complexity in product development. An invited group of three speakers provided presentations concerning the role of complexity in product development in a colloquia series in the Engineering Management Program at Florida Tech. These presentations were digitized into a format suitable for distribution over the Internet and made available to a global audience for the period April 9-27, 2001. Participants used a self-registration Web site to create a user account to access the presentations and a Web-based conference tool to interact with other participants. Invitations were e-mailed to numerous engineering and management professional groups and ads were placed in prominent journals. Two engineering organizations (IEEE Engineering Management Society and IEE Management Professional Network) endorsed the project and marketed the Web seminar to their memberships. As of April 28/sup th/, 452 people had accessed the seminar series using 16,373 "hits" to the web pages. The presentations were accessed 1,156 times. Minimal technical problems arose and the project delivered a process model for low cost, worldwide distribution of media and interactive sessions that is not commonly available in any current venue. This report summarizes the project, the operational details, the results, and conclusions drawn from this experiment.