[Commercial]
Introducer: Technology Evangelist Podcast for May 22, 2007. New Tech Tuesday
with special guest Howard Lichtman – telepresence guru, recorded live with
audience participation.
Benjamin Higginbotham: My name is Benjamin Higginbotham and with me as usual
Cariann Higginbotham as well.
Cariann Higginbotham: Hi.
Benjamin Higginbotham: We have got a special guest today and I am so glad we
do. Howard Lichtman, I hope I nailed that one that time.
Howard Lichtman: Nailed it.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Nailed it, it is a fun one to say. You are a
telepresence guru.
Howard Lichtman: Guilty.
Benjamin Higginbotham: I believe you are the CEO of the Human Productivity
Lab. Tells us a little bit about that?
Howard Lichtman: Sure we are the analysts and research firm that is focused on
telepresence conferencing and we do work with end users that are evaluating
purchasing telepresence systems for corporate enterprise purposes to manage
their global operations. We work for the vendors doing multi-inter studies on
what the market is, what the individual vendors are doing. We educate folks on
what the usage, the ROI and what the future of telepresence conferencing halls
and we are really the only folks that are solely focused on it, we were the
first company focused on it and it is been quite a growth industry, you have
seen HP jumping into the business, literally less than 12 months you have seen
HP, Cisco and Polycom all jumping to a technology that nobody has ever heard
of and you got John Chambers declaring – every time someone puts a mic in
front of his face, it will be in multi-billion dollar product line for Cisco
alone in the coming years and so now there is this tremendous interest and we
are really the only folks in the first that have been following.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Well, let’s backup a step, can you just define what is
telepresence, because lot of people have heard of video conferencing – telecom
meeting as it, where as which is totally different, but video conferencing and
audio conferencing and that whole tele thing. What is telepresence?
Howard Lichtman: Well, first of the name telepresence can mean, it means a lot
of different things to a lot of different folks, it can mean everything from
the robot that have video cameras mounted on them and screens that you can
drive around the factory for the machine that’s broken and interact with
collegues in remote locations, we don’t really do a lot with that, it can mean
what Robert Ballard is doing it in Woods Hole and trying to allow people to
bring them into the under sea world by creating virtual visual experience to
give them the feeling of being underwater, but the telepresence that I am
focused on and I think that the telepresence that John Chambers, and Polycom,
HP and DreamWorks are interested in is a telepresence conferencing which I
define as the closest thing to virtual reality for business meetings or the
longer definition is visual collaboration solutions that address the human
factors at meeting participants in create as closely as possible, an end
person meeting experience.
Benjamin Higginbotham: How do they do that?
Howard Lichtman: There is a variety of different ways to the live in
telepresence environment, a couple of things that they generally all having
saying the same is, it’s a room that you go into where you will have some
combination of the following, life size remote images, sometimes delivered to
video walls, sometimes they will deliver to very large format plasma screens
where the remote participants are life size, the acoustics are perfect, very
high resolution including ultra high definition 1080p quality video, studio
quality of acoustics, studio quality audio and putting a studio quality audio
environment, a consistency of quality on both sides. So, if you take a look at
traditional video conferencing where sometimes the cameras in the corner and
sometimes it is at the head of the table and sometimes at the side of the
table, sometimes it is buried in to the wall. Generally these are establishing
a consistency of quality which appears like you just took a room cleaved it in
half and put one half on the one side of the world and one half on the other
side of the world and using in the same architectural elements, the same
camera placement, the same format you got a business class consistency of
quality between the two, so that it seems like you are in the same physical
space and the people that you are talking to in China or in London or in the
Philippines or in China/London/and the Philippines simultaneously. They all
literally appear to be in sitting right across the table with you, it is very,
very comfortable, it is very natural and what these enterprise customers that
are shelling out quarter of a million plus to 400,000 plus for these
environments or finding is that when you get the human factors right, people
will actually use this and they will use a lot of it and so you will actually
get the ROI in a way to travel and in productivity and time to market
advantage that – video conferencing is kind of long promise, but really never
delivered because nobody really liked it.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Question from the chat room, Nath [phonetic] 927 asks,
“does telepresence have any use for businesses other than being big massive
corporations? Seems like iChat, email and old fashion telephones work fine for
the average small business?”
Howard Lichtman: So, I think the question is when is telepresence coming to
the small business, because while all of those mediums are effective
communication tools, small businesses still have to go out and meet with their
customers, they still have to go out and meet with their vendors, they still
have to go out and meet with their joint venture partners and the
average/small business would probably like more business and if they could
meet effectively with potential customers or vendors or partners around the
world in an environment that would allow them to be productive and build trust
and get all of that to settle these at inter personal communication that you
get in a face to face traditional meeting. I think that would have some value,
so may be that the question is, when is it coming to small and medium
businesses and I think it is coming sooner rather than later, it won’t
necessarily, I don’t think small business will be buying a quarter of a
million dollar room and paying up to 10,000 plus dollars a month for the
network and the service, what they will be doing is, they will be going to
publicly available telepresence facilities, where they can throw down their
American Express card, rent a room in their town and rent a room and Shinjin,
China or Bangalore or London and have a face-to-face meeting without 17 hour
flight and $5000 ticket.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Now, the question seems to be flying across the chat
room is, how much bandwidth does this take? They seem to think that this is
going to take an extreme amount of dual two way communication low-latency
bandwidth and that has to be costly to make that all go?
Howard Lichtman: So, most of these rooms throw anywhere from 8 meg to 45 meg
at the room itself, at the application itself.
Benjamin Higginbotham: So, you are throwing 8 to 45 megabits per second, just
to the room?
Howard Lichtman: And not just 8 to 45 megabits because telepresence doesn’t
really work on the best effort Internet, so what we are talking about is, we
are talking about connecting these two private true QoS – Quality of Service
Networks, which are delay in jitter and tolerance. So, you are nailing up
private network bandwidth that with no packet lose, no packet delay, no jitter
to create this very, very immersive experience which of the screen, if you
had, if there was delay, there was jitter, you have screen fragments and
remnants and it would be staccato, so it takes a lot of bandwidth and it takes
true quality service bandwidth as well.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Is there a lot of this going in, I have to imagine that
insanely expensive to get, just the bandwidth let alone, the cost of
installing the studio grade lighting and audio and video into these rooms.
Cariann Higginbotham: And these are dedicated lines.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Right, I wouldn’t call it i2 per se, but it is in
between I1 and I2.
Cariann Higginbotham: Right OK.
Howard Lichtman: They are running telepresence ever Internet-2 right now, so
all that what I call the high performance research networks are very, very
interested in telepresence. Most of them are doing telepresence running a
conference in June 4th, 5th, and 6th, where
at the folks from Internet-2 will be participating, but for the most part,
these are private networks built by the providers HP Halo has it is own
private network, there is a company called iformado which runs an effective
visual collaboration COIN and in person I will always have to apologize when I
introduced the term COIN, because I hate saddling anybody with new acronym, as
if we don’t have enough acronyms, but what I refer to a COIN is, is a
Community Of Interest Network and so not only are you providing in many cases
some corporations are just nailing up these circuits between their own
internal locations in a private virtual, private network, but probably the
majority of the systems that are deployed out there are deployed in these true
QoS community of interest networks were not only can you talk to your remote
officers, but you can also talk to the other members of the COIN, now if you
have done a lot of video conferencing, or you are familiar with video
conferencing, most of the video conferencing that’s get done today is done
what I would call intra company. So, it is the head quarters taking to the
branch office.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Right, yeah.
Howard Lichtman: It is not the headquarters talking with their partners, their
customers or their vendors and there is a couple of reasons, the quality
frankly hasn’t been there for customer interaction, there is a firewall
issues, there is network having the network bandwidth, true QoS bandwidth
nailed up between the locations, there is cultural things, security reasons,
etcetera and so one of the problems that these telepresence environments, at
telepresence effective visual collaboration points are solving is not only
they are providing a connectivity for intra company business, but they are
connecting to these networks of vendors joint venture partners and customers
where you can now, go in and talk with other supply chain and other members of
the network. This is starting small but my prediction is that this is killer
app, that is going to drive a very rapid adoption as more and more companies
join these telepresence and effective visual collaboration community of
interest networks. You are going to see the utility go through the roof,
because now I can connect my public accountcy, now I can connect to my
consulting firm, now I can connect to my outside law firm, now I can connect
to these growing networks of publicly available telepresence rooms around the
world and so now the things that I can do in a telepresence environment go up
and so that the pay-off for joining drops, it is the unit becomes – now, it is
starting to make sense, because other people are on that I need to talk to,
and I can reduce our cost of doing business by getting connected into the
network and so I think that growing utilities has the potential and will drive
exponential adoption.
Benjamin Higginbotham: I think part of the problem with current conferencing
is that there are so many different conference system, the part of the reason
that is all intra-office communications that they have all standardized on
Tandberg or Polycom or pick your vendor and they don’t the Tandberg, Polycom’s
and whomever else you want to choose, don’t really play nice with each other.
You can get them to play, but it is pain in the butt to make that all to work
together, does it feel like that same things happening in telepresence? You
got the HP Halo System, you have got the Cisco Systems, are they all going to
hand shake nicely, so you can just move into an HP Halo System and talk to a
Cisco System or is that not happening yet?
Howard Lichtman: Not anytime soon. So, you have got kind of the same market
dynamic that goes on with the Polycom’s and the Tandberg’s and the others,
where you have got the folks that have this technical sophistication and have
built – in the case of Cisco their own ultra high definition camera and codec
platform, they want to leverage that. They want to hold on to that, that
technology as purely Cisco, Polycom has their own high definition platform and
they want to leverage that and so I think you will definitely see standards
develop that – Cisco just announced theirs will be backwards compatible with
traditional video. HP Halo has done a deal with Tandberg to make their systems
backwards compatible with traditional video and so you will see – work around,
where a traditional video conferencing systems are married into these systems
to provide their backward capability. You will see it get integrated into the
product in coming years, but for the most part every vendor wants to try and
leverage in their management.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Is that going to work in the long run through? I
understand that they want to leverage their own advantage, but part of which
you are talking about is this been able to communicate with anyone anywhere.
Are they going to get, continue to be able to do that or they all going to
have to get together play nice and some sort of harmonistic little area and
sing songs and be all happy and actually play nice and hand shake with each
other?
Howard Lichtman: I think they will, I think the customers will drive up
towards, I think the customers are going to get advantage, no body wants to
buy a system that it is island done to itself.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Right.
Howard Lichtman: And so I think that the market wants an operability , the
market wants inter connectedness of these effective visual collaboration
networks and so you will see, overtime and it will depend on a variety of
factors, but I think that you will see ultimately a standard develop, standard
end format, a standard end communication protocols and standard end in network
QoS that will – it will take some time, but the world wants to talk to each
other and they need standards to do that so, I think we will see that.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Do mostly the cost I assume, right now, telepresence is
stuck in pretty high end enterprise, where you not going to want take the
company jet, especially with the cost of gas lately, across overseas or
wherever you are going to go, just go into your telepresence room and that
$15,000 per month, for bandwidth that just maintenance fees on the room. We
will pay for itself very quickly, but that’s in a very large enterprise and as
we push down the market, even smaller enterprise or medium businesses or
small/medium businesses, how long that we can start to see this really
shuffling and pushing yourself down the market or we are going to be stuck in
the large enterprise for very long time or we can do as you said those rooms
across the country or mix of all of that?
Howard Lichtman: I think it is going to be a little bit of mix of everything,
so public availability is coming sooner rather than later. We just, the folks
become specialize in renting these office on-demand locations. They are in 900
locations in something like 400 cities and 70 countries. They have announced
that they are rolling out an initial 50 publicly available Cisco telepresence
systems, the lab …. the Human Productivity Lab, we have our own initiative to
launch a global network of publicly available telepresence centers that would
be located in high-end retail outlets and work in the market. Right now, turn
rates 25 millions for that efforts. So, you will see us and others in effort
led by the co-founder of TeleSuite and Destiny conferencing and netpresence
one of the pioneers of the telepresence is called Pangaea, there is also
looking to launch a network of publicly available locations. So, these
publicly available locations are coming, but at the same time if you take a
look at all of the costs involved in making one of these and putting one of
these environments going out, there is an interesting dynamic and then all of
the major cost of the components are coming down at the same time the quality
is going up. So, the cost of cameras and codecs and bandwidth and as you get
more of these environments out there, you got mass production and you got
streamline business processes is being able to install and support and manage
these.
So, the costs are coming down, the quality is going up and also the utility is
going up. So, while there is – and I think without a doubt this makes sense
for the majority of the global 5,000 for them to purchase one of these systems
or number of these systems and if you got a geographically diverse your
knowledge worker company and you are doing anything involving some what
frequent travel, especially if you are global, especially if you are trying to
do business in the far east or in India or you got technology relationship in
Bangalore development, relationship in one of those low cost tech geographies
that the ROI is fast and it is furious and these give you disaster recovery
capabilities, they give you more – it will start you saving money, it is the
ability to do meetings that you wouldn’t be able to do that even if money is
no object, I mean here it is sometimes plane just doesn’t take off and you got
the whole team, you had this big meetings scheduled and then you have
everybody in the room and two or three people, they need it and you got to go
to plan B and so that there is a number of these other its not just avoiding
the cost of the ticket in fact the hard cost of travels often then, frankly
the smallest component of the ROI you get it’s the business effectiveness,
it’s the ability to bring more of the team, its again disaster recovery
capabilities, its time to market advantage, its productivity, its less wear
and tear on your road warriors, there is a number of benefits that you get and
so the ROI is for the global 5000 is absolutely one to two year ROI which is
nothing for them. And so the secret is out and these folks are buying more and
more and using, I am saying it amazing amount of adoption.
Benjamin Higginbotham: So pushes down even further we’ve got the high end
enterprise, we’ve got the small bidding business that will probably do the
facilities located in malls next to your Apple store wherever it is and now
let us go into the home, do you think this is something that will ever hit the
general consumer in their home, so you can just sit at home and do your
Telepresence right into work, what is there strictly going to be in other
facilities so I mean we’re pushing a way in the future may be 5,10,15 years
from now?
Howard Lichtman: No, in our publicly available initiative which we call power
on virtual. We’ve some designs for solutions for Telepresence solution that
would go into, they would go into your, kind of high end home theatre and the
components that are going to make that possible are FiOS, fiber to the home
another fiber to, when I lived in Austin, Texas there, Glendale was literally
stringing fiber from poles on the street right down there, individual houses,
so fibers beginning to arrive at the house, the other components you get, kind
of a race between the folks that are bringing you the codec over the PC, with
the folks that are going to bring you the codec over the set top box and well
probably you are going to get in trouble with the folks, its Cisco for
speculating on this because they have never publicly confirm this, they always
smile and every time I ask.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Well I will save you because I think I know where you
are going to go Cisco own scientific Atlanta.
Howard Lichtman: Oh you are good.
Benjamin Higginbotham: So there is some sort of relationship going on there,
you mean you can just kind of look at and go because you look at why would
they purchase Scientific Atlanta, what’s the strategic advantage for that, how
are they going to push bits and then you start thinking Telepresence and what
pushes more bits in Telepresence?
Howard Lichtman: Its not only pushing more bits but from the Cisco standpoint,
Cisco wins a couple different ways in this, they win by selling the
Telepresence system which is high dollar kind of high margin item for them but
they also win because there is nothing else this is really the Killer App for
bandwidth, there is no other widely applicable application and notice some I
am giving the Caveat widely plumbing those, the other stuff that super
conducting, super colliders shipping tera bits of data between each
other but as far as widely applicable to the majority and kind of the global
5000, 10000, 25000 there is really no other Killer App where you could get a
high dollar ROI on the board of travel you can get increased productivity, you
can connect your partners and etc, like Telepresence there is no other
applications that uses the much bandwidth, there is no other application that
requires true QoS bandwidth, there is no other application that is poised to
grow exponentially and there is no other application that has as much real
pain and I am talking about pain on the lower back then avoiding physical
travel and so this is really the Killer App for the networking industry for
Cisco and they are, you hit the nail on the head, what I am speculating and
speculated in our recent paper that we publish its available on our website
humanproductivitylab.com, papers called "Telepresence effective visual
collaboration in the future of global business at the speed of light".
Benjamin Higginbotham: That rolls right off the tongue.
Cariann Higginbotham: Yeah do you anagram that at all?
Howard Lichtman: Its too many letters to make sense.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Make a great tattoo.
Howard Lichtman: But I openly speculated that you will see the Cisco
ultra-high definition codec and camera platform I think you will see that
integrated into the coming Cisco scientific Atlanta set top box to the future
and so now you hook up that to the, you hook that to the Verizon FiOS and you
got the Grandma channel now it won’t be, now initially it won’t be its
not going to be the kind of Telepresence experience that you were used to, if
you go into a 250,000 to 400,000 plus dollar Telepresence environment it will
be something more account to the traditional kind of observant, traditional
video conferencing experience that the most people are used to all that in
ultra high definition, but what I think as usual thing, the same way that the
kind of the home theatre industry developed around providing in enhanced home
theatre capability to the people that can afford and desire that, I think that
you are going to see an industry including being led by our initiative,
virtual that will provide solutions that will address, provide a Telepresence
display, Mary kind of the core Cisco technology with the right display
technology with the right lighting, with the right acoustical pickup to where
you can go into your home theater or install it in your kitchen and whenever
you want have lunch or dinner with the kids or grand parents or like a term I
am coining this, I got copyright on it to use, I mean nickel, but I think we
were coming to the point we are going to see the Grandma channel .
Benjamin Higginbotham: You are coining grandma channel.
Cariann Higginbotham: Just as long as it’s not my grandmother, we are good.
Howard Lichtman: I want to talk to your grandmother too.
Cariann Higginbotham: I don’t know she probably flip you off.
Howard Lichtman: That’s cool, I like grandma just fun, this is ok but
literally it’s we both turn on the TV and talk to grandma anytime you want or
talk to the kids or talk to your buddy from college or bench point connect
back to the office and work effectively from home without having to fight that
commute and that just work effectively from home and again connect to the
world globally this is not a North American phenomena this is a global
phenomena and now that is coming.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Make the world smaller place in a way.
Howard Lichtman: Absolutely.
Benjamin Higginbotham: One interesting application that I’d never thought of
but was brought up in the chat room little bit earlier is the gaming market
and been able to do immersive gaming because you got multi player games right
down they try to do that little itty bitty video window and that kind of a
headset chat thing , but if you could do a virtual game world on a
Telepresence type system how awesome would that be?
Howard Lichtman: Go ahead Cariann
Cariann Higginbotham: I was just going to say that well we were chatting but
that in the chat room a kind of attend to the oh see now I can’t remember what
it was called, the Holideck like on the enterprise. Could they fit if you
would that immersed in it and everything is life size etc that’s kind of how
that would be?
Howard Lichtman: And it is and by the way you are talking to someone that’s
actually got to play quake on a 20 foot by 5 foot curved lenticular
screen and it was bad at above.
Cariann Higginbotham: Oh bad.
Benjamin Higginbotham: that’s awesome.
Cariann Higginbotham: I am not a even gamer but I totally would.
Benjamin Higginbotham: The chat room is going crazy, I will think of a we in a
Telepresence, something like that been able to play with someone across the
country have their full video right next to you plus the gaming cost one after
that how awesome would that be?
Cariann Higginbotham: That’s amazing.
Howard Lichtman: Its currently PC game, all these factors are getting cheaper,
faster and better everything from the graphics, I mean the graphics kind of
accelerators to the screen technology to processing power everything is
getting cheaper and everything is getting cooler and so its common.
Benjamin Higginbotham: I think one of the things many people would say, at
least what I have heard so far is that why would I do Telepresence, I had
video conferencing and video conferencing has really taken off of that much so
what’s the point, why even do it?
Howard Lichtman: Well the reason and this is, what my belief is in the
research that I’ve done and kind of what I outlined in the paper of the
exceedingly what on name that I mentioned earlier, is it the reason is that
video conferencing never really took off was that people didn’t really like
the experience, at the end of the day, the brain, we are all humans and you’ve
got the human brain has some innate expectations with respect to human
communication, when I talk to somebody in person meeting I expect them to look
me in the eye, I expect them to be life size, I expect them to be the right
color, I expect them to have fluid motion and accurate flesh tones and what
you got with traditional video conferencing is you got and you didn’t get any
of that, you got where 6,8,10 inch tall people that are and if it some multi
point meeting, they are all stacked in Hollywood Squares and now that even
taller most of the time the lighting wasn’t right in the room, the acoustic
weren’t that good, the system was hard to use and so you really didn’t get the
experience of the brain was expecting and so what I believe is there was some
little biconomy going on there where the brain is kind of fighting two
different trying to pay attention to two different experiences simultaneously
starting to pay attention to the medium and by the medium I define this
observant experience and the brain cynical “Why is this guy 8 inches tall? Why
is he on my TV set? Why is his color off? or why is the room dark? Why is the
direct over head lighting casting a shadow over the eyebrow, casting a shadow
over the eye socket?
And at the same time its trying to pay attention to the medium, its also
sooner trying to pay attention to the message, what is being said, what’s the
person’s body language, if it’s even visible on the with 8-10 inch
participants on the screen and so what happens in Telepresence meeting is when
you address these and they expectations of the human brain and its preferences
for inter-personal communication, the medium is able to fall away and the
brain is able to kind of become immersed experienced and really pay attention
to the message and the technology is most of the time invisible or minimized
to be and distracting and so you really able to focus on the person on the
other end of the world that you are talking to there is no delay, there is no
perceivable delay, there is no observe an experience and what the kind of the
earlier adopters have found is when you do that your employees will use these
systems 6,7,8,10 times, the usage that they would have done, they would been
doing with traditional video, so people will actually say “hey where is they
might have said, I really need to move the ball on this project and I know if
I do a video conference and I might not even get people to come, so I am going
to go ahead and I am going to fly there and I am going to move the ball, this
project with Telepresence, people are saying “ Hey I like this, this is, I can
actually get stuff done its, this is effective, so I am going to use it” where
as, they might not use the traditional video.
Cariann Higginbotham: Its sounds like it will be a much more comfortable
experience kind of like that you are saying before, its sounds awesome.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Can I still do a multi party conference, you mention
that in traditional video conferencing you get the Hollywood Squares thing but
in Telepresence every time I see picture of it, it’s like a “It’s just this
wall, this continuous wall so how would you do multi party conference with
that?
Howard Lichtman: Well there is that, the folks in the company of the
manufactures, the wall is my old company, I got into the Telepresence industry
when I walked into a, was then there is tele-sweep which is now known as a
Polycom RPX and I walked in and it was life size participants on the other
side and it was addressing the acoustics’ addressing the, lighting that it was
a bullet to the brain, I just I knew and that I was looking into future of
visual communications and in that environment the wall is actually 2 to 4
separate panels and so in a multi point conference each of the panels is
receiving one Pie shaped video edge from the other sides and if alpha and if
you are in a two screen system keeping what I call Telepresence multi point
where you keep everybody life size, you can now connect up to three sides if
you have got a, the 8 foot video wall, we’ve got two 4 foot panels and each 4
foot panel is sending one section of one of these remote rooms, now because
these rooms are all married environments what you are actually looking at, it
actually appears like you are looking at the same room and you are looking at
just room.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Even though there are three or four of them across the
world.
Howard Lichtman: Well in the case of, the one that has the 24/4 you can have,
there is yourself and these other two, maintaining this true kind of
Telepresence multi point if you got a 4*16 foot video wall and kind of the
larger system, then you can have five rooms connected and you are looking one
Pie shade slice of the four remote rooms married together and it creates kind
of seamless environment if all the systems are the same and they get the same
back drop and table color and seat color, so really does appear as if the
folks are in the same room, you can even add more locations by kind of
combining traditional what I called Telepresence multi point with the more the
Hollywood Squares video formats, so Polycom can do that too, you lose a little
bit but its not but delivering that multi point experience that traditional
Brady Bunch Hollywood Squares multi point experience to a video wall is lot
better than delivering it to a 36, 40 or even 50 inch plasma so it’s a
much-much enhanced experience even when you are connecting to traditional
video conferencing end points.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Howard where I can go for more information on
Telepresence?
Howard Lichtman: Humanproductivitylab.com and I would recommend our paper
Telepresence effective visual collaboration and the future of global business
at a speed light.
Benjamin Higginbotham: How soon it will be before I can actually go to a
Telepresence room and rent some time?
Howard Lichtman: We are working, we are dancing as fast as we can, but if you
know any investors that are interested in revolutionizing visual collaboration
globally, send them more way and we will try and get you in one sooner rather
than later.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Howard I got a bunch of nifty ideas floating around my
brain and if you could use Telepresence suite for I’ve just been ranting and
wafting about the last few weeks, I think this is incredibly exciting
technology and actually so do the people on 24 for those of who have missed
you can actually see it Telepresence suite, the Cisco Telepresence suite on
24, I don’t think that the normal Telepresence suite has that Cisco logo that
fades out every time, you go in and out of the call though.
Cariann Higginbotham: Probably not but it probably should.
Benjamin Higginbotham: But its really cool, so if you are watching the show 24
watch for that you can see kind of what we were talking about in action there
and is that a accurate representation of what Telepresence is?
Howard Lichtman: Yeah actually I thought that video that they do on 24, it was
good but it doesn’t really, the magic here and I’ve yet to meet anybody that
really got it until you are actually sitting in the room and you are actually
its really as an experience and you really got a experience it and understand
it and we are having a conference June 4th , 5th and
6th of the University of San Diego called Telerpresence world and
you can get information on humanproductivitylab.com/telepresenceworld, but you
can come out, you can see a Polycom RPX, you can see a Cisco Telepresence
system, you can see systems from Teleraus Digital video enterprises and some
of the other major Telepresence vendors, Telepresence tech all in one place
and it will be the largest assemblage of Telepresence systems anywhere and
highly recommended to anybody that’s interested in the subject.
Benjamin Higginbotham: I think it will be cool, I will try to make it there
myself.
Cariann Higginbotham: Wow awesome.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Howard thank you so much for your time and your
expertise on the subject is been a pleasure.
Howard Lichtman: It was a pleasure being part with you today.
Benjamin Higginbotham: Thank you so much, for those who are listening tomorrow
will be Web 2.0 Wednesday and we will be doing this live podcast once again at
10.00 clock Eastern, 9.00 Central, 7.00 Pacific, so please join us then, thank
you so much for listening and have a great day.
