Video Conferencing - My Initial Skepticsim But Now...

Telepresence News and Events October, 2008

WOW! What an amazing month for the Telepresence Industry! First off, did anyone see the Cisco TelePresence Human Network commercials that are airing during this seasons NFL Football games? A great sign that public adoption of Telepresence is near.

In other news from the 24/7 Telepresence Breaking News reel at the Telepresence Forum, BT announced that they’ve launched their inter-company Telepresence solution, Proctor & Gamble implemented new Telepresence rooms, Polycom received a “Rising Star” for their innovations and Verizon Teamed with Cisco to offer new productivity enhancing services using Cisco’s collaboration portfolio. Did I mention this was just a few of the Telepresence highlights from this past week? Hundreds of Telepresence news articles hit the wire this last month, and if the past is any indication of the future, we’ll see those Telepresence news posts double by Spring 2009.

I also noticed that companies like Digital Video Enterprises, Telepresence Options and of course our Telepresence Forum were listed in the Open Directory Project at www.DMOZ.org. Pretty big news considering Telepresence didn’t exist, or even have a category just a month ago or so in the human edited ODP.

Our website traffic amongst our 345+ Telepresence related domains has tripled since early August, another indication that Telepresence is getting ready to explode onto Main Street. People are “hearing” of it, people are “researching” it, and once they’ve performed their due diligence, they’ll “see and feel” what the pioneers of the Telepresence industry have been saying. Telepresence is near; Telepresence is here.

Well that’s it for now Readers. We hope you stop by the Telepresence Forum to learn a little about what the differences between plain old video conferencing and Telepresence are. C'mon by, sign up (free by the way), watch a Telepresence video or two, and drop us a line or comment with your Telepresence thoughts and experiences.

Take care , hope to see you on the Forum!

Your Editor and Administrator - L II
"Ride on the Next Plane of Existence" TM

Way back then, I had my own share of doubts with web video conferencing, particularly when business was concerned.

The first time I ever got to see an online video conference session, I wasn?t exactly impressed. My boss though, who owned a shop, was very much all praise for it, but then again, he?s always been easy to impress when it came to gadgets and gizmos. My sentiments for video conferencing were not the same.

We used a video conference setup in coordinating and communicating with other shop branches across the nation. We were in the heating and cooling industry, and had a number of branches scattered in various locations. Through video conference sessions, we got to see just what?s going on in our sister branches.

One would think, ?how could you find that to be a problem?? Well, truth be told, because of video conferencing, the pressures of work were raised, as it intimidated a number of employees. We were in the area of sales, and, truth be told, our training wasn?t exactly that great. We had enough troubles as it were then.

With a video conferencing system up and about, the pressure level just rose. Oh, and this: after every session, the equipment would just breakdown. I just felt that it just wasn?t worth it. Considering all the resulting factors, I felt web video conference was just a lot of hot air.

Years later, when I finally managed to setup a business of my own, one of my own business partners, suggested we implement a video conference setup to facilitate our communications with our clients who were too far away for physical meetings and such.

Considering my experience with video conferencing, I was against it, yet diplomatic in telling my partner my non-interest in it. I explained to him that what difference would video conferencing impact, when what I have to say I could easily say through email.

The other concern I had was the bandwidth we would need. Originally our office was just using a DSL line but I knew eventually we had to increase our bandwidth to a T1 and run voice t1 and data over the same lines as our business grew. It was just me thinking short term over the initial cost but I had to really think of it as an investment and know this would help our company grow and become more efficient.

He insisted and insisted that it would be a huge benefit for us, and soon enough, we had a video conference session set up in our meeting room. He of course spent for the equipment himself, confident that seeing what video conferencing has become now would surely change my mind over my sentiments of it in the past. After a session, I realized how wrongly placed my sentiments for video conferencing were.

Looking back now, I feel somewhat funny over how adamant I was against video conferencing. It does have its line of benefits, as well as its breed of convenience. Today, I?m actually much more open to the idea of it, but not exactly open enough to trade it for the more traditional means of communication.

Article by Van Theodorou, learn how you can slash your business long distance expenses by 43% and more.

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To learn more about Telepresence, the revolutionary new style of immersive video conferencing; visit these websites:

Telepresence Today - Telepresence information and editor qualified headline news

On Telepresence - Information, videos and fact sheets "on Telepresence"

Telepresence 101 - All Telepresence, all the time. Telepresence 101

Telepresence.cc - Telepresence vs. Video Conferencing

Go Telepresence! - "Ride on the Next Plane of Existence" - Go Telepresence!

Telepresence Report - 24/7 breaking Telepresence related news and information