Back I am with the Future of Online Collaboration / Web Conferencing interview series started last fall and to which I am going to add quite a few new contributions in the coming weeks.

The first guest in this new series is Chuck Digate, CEO and President of Convoq, a company that with its own innovative product, ASAP, has been bridging the conferencing, collaboration and live presentation markets.

ASAP, which is moving in its second year of life, is a real-time conferencing solution that integrates among other features voice-over-IP, video, high-quality delivery of PowerPoint presentations, application sharing, remote control, instant messaging, advanced presence awareness and event management facilities like no other real-time conferencing solution does.

Based on the powerful Macromedia Flash technology (that is indeed taking these real-time industries by storm) Convoq ASAP has been a true pioneering solution in leveraging the potential of instant messaging and presence awareness to deliver easier access to small, informal, just-in-time collaborative meetings that are the core of effective team work.

Chuck Digate is a well versed technology expert with a strong business management experience across many successful software technology companies.

In this interview I touch upon the traditional set of core questions I have fired at many of my guests before, with a stronger focus on key broad issues relating to markets, competitions, standards and the future to come.

His answers show the vision of one brave small company that has no fear in competing with major established players in these industries, as it understands that the weaknesses of its competitors are its own great opportunities.

There is indeed space for many courageous and forward-looking companies in these real-time collaboration spaces and Chuck Digate's Convoq is one of those companies that has understood first the disrupting potential of interoperability across different communication tools (ASAP allows users to tap into all of the major IM networks simultaneously) and the extreme usefulness that the smart use of presence awareness mechanisms can bring.

Here is his view: