What's the difference between collaboration and web conferencing?

What's the difference between collaboration and web conferencing?

I have heard the terms "collaboration" and "web conferencing" used almost interchangeably - are they the same thing?

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Collaboration is a process of gathering input from one or more people and incorporating that input into the final product, whatever that might be. Web conferencing is one tool which facilitates the collaboration process but should not be thought of as being one in the same. Voice, data, and visual communications mediums in all forms can be used as collaboration tools. Web conferencing is clearly a powerful combination of these. We should not forget that face to face meetings are also powerful collaboration tools at times.

This was first published in February 2008