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December 05/2006
The Times (by Chris Partridge)
VIRTUAL TALKS GET UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL; FOCUS REPORT; WORKPLACE REVOLUTION
One thing is certain in the next ten years international travel is going to become more expensive, time consuming and painful.
Falling oil stocks, rising carbon taxes and endless security checks will make air travel in particular a nightmare. So companies are looking again at videoconferencing to bring people together in cyberspace.
The first generation of videoconferencing technology never fulfilled its promise.
The blurry video and poor sound quality failed to deliver that here-in-person feeling. Phone lines were plagued by delays that broke the flow of converations.
The arrival of internet protocol communications and the plummeting cost of big TV screens have ushered in a new generation of videoconferencing systems -a technology dubbed telepresence. A telepresence suite looks much like a boardroom, except that the table has very large flat screens along one side. When the screens are switched on, the images show a similar boardroom, as if a mirror was mounted across the table. The others taking part are shown full size, as realistically as possible.
Instead of having a single microphone over each screen, microphones are placed around the room to pick up the direction in which a person is speaking.
Participants in the virtual "boardroom" then turn to look at them, as if they were all in the same room. Both boardrooms have the same whiteboard showing the same presentations, and documents can even be "passed" across the table by inserting them into a scanner in one room and printing them out in the other.
One of the pioneers of telepresence is Teliris, an Anglo-American company chaired by Martyn Lewis, the former television news presenter. "The technology disappears and people can start behaving normally," he says. "The absence of the sound delay even makes it possible to interrupt. It is really like sitting opposite someone."
This year IT giants HP and Cisco moved into the market.
Lewis is particularly proud of the way telepresence could help to save the planet.
Teliris, the company, was recently certified as carbon neutral and its VirtuaLive system is endorsed by the Carbon Neutral Company as having an immediate impact on carbon emissions by reducing corporate travel.
Telepresence is a big corporate system, each room costing at least Pounds 200,000 to equip, but prices are likely to fall dramatically over the next ten years.
A future in which workers at home can attend meetings around the globe without sacrificing face-to-face interaction may be on the way.
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