Successful Teleconference for Fulbright Q&A Session

Wow, I have participated in multiple projects with telepresence, (Actvie Worlds Web Opera at Cornell connecting with Art Center College of Design, and then with a NASA sponsored program called “Skyways of Tomorrow” where we connected with two groups of grade-school students in San Diego and Kansas via the web) and neither was as seemless as this experience today. It seemed like a very simple set up, and there was little lag. Denver, Washington DC, New York, Chicago, and San Francisco were all represented, and the only button to push was the mute button on the microphone.

Video was occasionally pixelated, and it was corrected very rapidly. I learned a lot, had my question answered regarding the best way to present portfolio material…I think I’m going to use Breeze to make a demonstration of my websites that I’ve created…that will convey much more information than a screen shot of the page.

Since 2001 and 2004, it appears video conference technology has imporved quite a bit. From what I could tell, there wasn’t a computer directly present, interaction was via TV with a camera on top that was using some computing power somewhere not in the same room (perhaps housed in the camera box).

In the two previously mentioned projects, the computers were doing double duty, in that the were running other applications as well as the one that was sending and receiving audio and video. I think in the CU project we were running 1.2mhz pentiums with windows 2000, and in the SFAI it was a single processor g5. I bet those new quad core Macs really zing…

I’m so excited about this experience, becase it shows me that telepresence can really happen at near real-time. I’m intrigued to see how the new macs work with the integrated camera and if it’s possible to have other users know what’s on your own screen…something to look into for PC aps as well, as the great majority of comp. users are still beige boxin’.