A short opinion piece by an opinionated person.
Wait, what is telepresence?
What is telepresence and why do people who call their
products ‘telepresence’ keep chirping the new mantra that it is dead? I get
that software systems were the big hub bub of 2012 and that actual
telepresence products have had slowing sales. In this day and age, price is
certainly more of a driving factor than experience.
It makes me wonder a few things. I wonder if those who
denounce immersive systems, or call their product immersive, have ever been in
an actual immersive telepresence meeting. Essentially for something to be
immersive, it has to transform your state of mind. In a telepresence situation,
that would mean to forget the person you’re talking to is not in the same room.
For me that means people have to be life size, the video can’t be choppy and
the audio must not suck.
It also makes me wonder why companies would call their
product ‘immersive’ or ‘telepresence’ then turn right around and denounce the
term.
I have a Toyota Rav4. It is a car or more appropriately a
compact SUV. I don’t call it a race car. Because it’s not.
On a side note, it’s my opinion that competing companies
should embrace each other as opposed to bad attempts to spite their
competition. Eventually, hardware, software and ‘cloud’ (I’ll let the reader
determine what that actually means) video conference products will all
interoperate the same way my new Blackberry (don’t judge!) can call a 50 year
old land line. If they don’t, they simply won’t exist for very long. We are all
going to have to get along, may as well start doing it now.
Bryan
www.hellarddesign.com
Bryan
www.hellarddesign.com