Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Keynote Speech Announced for Tele-Presence Forum Expo September 28-29 - Boulder

From Tele-Presence Forum - http://www.telepresenceforum.org/

Keynote Speech Announced for Tele-Presence Forum Expo September 28-29 - Boulder

From Teleconferencing to Telepresence - Making Virtual Meetings Work For You

Hal Josephson is President of MediaSense

· A brief history -- thirty years of tele-meetings - what will meetings be like 30 years from now
· Best practices -- developing valuable tele-skills - enhancing human communications with tele/presence
· Creative techniques applied: lessons learned - what has failed and what will it take to succeed

Hal Josephson is President of MediaSense http://mediasense.org/, a San Francisco firm that specializes in international business development, strategic marketing/communication and special project planning management services for high-tech businesses. Hal works extensively Pacific Rim companies focusing on assisting partnerships and alliances with Chinese companies. In addition, Hal is the annual Program Chair, Executive Producer and Host of the annual Digital Entertainment Leadership Forum (DELF) and the Cyberport Venture Capital Forum (CVCF) in Hong Kong, China.

Hal has specific industry experience in satellite communications, teleconferencing, interactive media, IP licensing, as well as conference design, event promotion and media production, with decades of experience
in international business development and strategic marketing.

Hal was a co-founder of the International Teleconferencing Assn. (ITS) and has served on the Board of Directors of the Australian-American Chamber of Commerce. Hal has been an Advisor to New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, The Banff New Media Institute and the City of San Jose.

Hal was a founding instructor of San Francisco State University's Multimedia Studies Program, and is co-author of the book, Careers in Multimedia: Roles and Resources. In addition, Hal has authored a variety of articles about communication and media in diverse publications including Digital Media, New Scientist, NewMedia, Information Week SMB,
Conferenza, New Zealand Business and Australia's Metro Magazine.

Hal has keynoted more than 100 industry events during his career, both nationally and internationally, and has appeared as a guest speaker at the World Congress for Information Technology, in Adelaide, Australia, at Unitec's New Zealand Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and at Calgary, Alberta's Westlink Innovation Center. Hal's presentations include: "Doing Effective Business in a Shifting World Marketplace", "Smart Marketing for Entrepreneurial Businesses" and "Business Development by Design: Strategies that Generate Results".

Cisco TelePresence Fundamentals - Book Review

This from the Tele-PresenceForum.com

Part 1 of many parts of a Book Review on:

Cisco TelePresence Fundamentals

www.ciscopress.com

By: Tim Szigeti - CCIE No. 9794; Kevin McMenamy; Roland Saville; Alan Glowacki
Publisher: Cisco Press
Pub. Date: May 28, 2009
Print ISBN-10: 1-58705-593-7
Print ISBN-13: 978-1-58705-593-5
Web ISBN-10: 1-58705-911-8
Web ISBN-13: 978-1-58705-911-7
Pages in Print Edition: 624

First of all this a great book on tele/presence. I like the / (slash) between tele and presence just like I preferred it in the term tele/conferencing. This is a multi-part book review and interview with one of the author(s) Tim Szigeti who is a member of the Enterprise Solutions Engineering Design Team at Cisco Systems.

To be brief, I will address three issues - technical, design, and human factors in each review and even if I did that for a year it would only cover a fraction of the very useful information in the book. You can read snippets that I will include in the TPF-Tele/Presence Forum newsletter or just go buy it from Amazon or Cisco Press Book Price: $49.50 and eBook Price: $15.40 - a great value at ten or even 100 times the price. How can I say that - because TP-Tele/Presence design is like the web ever-finished, final or friendly. That is, TP systems are very complex and the network design can be daunting, then there are the human factors which have, IMHO, held this concept back for more than thirty years.

Meanwhile not to waste any more of your time.

TECH-Tip - The authors recommend the implements of IEEE 802.1p/Q within TP networks. The IEEE specification defines a standards-based system for providing VLAN-Virtual Local Area Network tagging and COS-Class of Service (why the o is in lower case in CoS and in upper case in QOS is a mystery) across Ethernet networks. This is accomplished through an additional 4-byte tag (called a label in MPLS-Multi-Protocol Label Switching), which carries VLAN and frame prioritization information. The 802.1Q tag has a specific formation of four fixed-length fields. Two of the four fields carry the frame prioritization and VLAN information. If you want to see "visually" what this looks like click here or go to www.techtionary.com where you can the details in an animated tutorial. To conclude, the PCP-Priority Code Point bits provide eight levels of priority traffic priorities for Ethernet or Layer 2 frame level. For example, different classes of traffic are assigned to different CoS values such as VoIP/SIP/OCS might used CoS 5 value, tele/presence CoS 4 value and data traffic sent with a default of CoS 0 (zero). Bottom-line is if you are going to do voice, video or other multi-media communications you need to implement 802.1p/Q on the LAN. That is, QOS is important on the "last foot" as much as the "last mile."


DESIGN-Tip - It's the economy stupid, is common joke about what politicians should be really doing. In TP its audio, stupid. Why I say this is because we talk everyday often all day on cell phones where the audio skips and gaps occur all too often. In TP, it is really doubtful that that the video will ever be done correctly because it would simply take too much money to have sound stages used in network broadcast news along with makeup, news gathering and just good presentations skills. These issues are not forgotten and will be addressed in upcoming TPF Newsletter issues. However, the authors do an excellent job in room design and audio issues. They give specific valuable recommendations addressing the problems with audio. Paraphrased, the authors indicate, "Background noise and reverberation in the room can degrade acoustic qualities and even disrupt the audio switching behavior in multipoint (multi-location) meetings. Therefore, careful engineering of the environment must be done to ensure that ambient noise and reverberation levels with the room are kept in check. The goal is to re-create the experience of an in-person meeting. Cisco has defined precise targets and thresholds for ambient noise and reverberation . . . . providing a comprehensive test methodology for measuring levels and recommendations for remediating typical sources interference. The key point is to have a test and measurement methodology for all aspects of TP and a means for providing periodic auditing and improvement.


HUMAN-Tip - The book excels in many areas but it is the human factor that has kept TP or tele/conferencing from really being a part of mainstream business communications. Certainly businesses use it but there were video tele/conferencing systems thirty years ago (that's right 30) that were more advanced than what is commonly found available today. In the spirit of not wanting to wait another thirty years, here are a few human factors or as Mr. Hal Josephson, the keynote speaker of the TPF Expo calls it "tele-skills." In my book, Teleconferencing - Linking People Together Electronically focused on a wide range of human factors. For example, evaluation of the tele/presence experience should be an ongoing effort from the onset. Ultimate success depends upon a good starting point or base. When there is a basepoint or baseline is known, change, good or bad, can be measured. Here are a few examples of what to measure. Of course, you can come up with your own questions. How do people perceive and adjust to tele/conferencing? How is the speed, type and nature of inter-personal communication affected? How does tele/conferencing affect the duration and organization of the meeting? To keep this brief, please think of all the different communications patterns that existing in typical face-to-face meetings as shown by the very funny graphic shown here.


Then consider how communication changes in a tele/presence meeting.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Part 1 – Telepresence Visualized Dictionary

Tele/Presence Forum – “Innovations in Being There Without Going There”
Tele-Library – Technology Visualized – “Putting Motion to the Notion”

Tele/Presence Forum Explains Trends, Technology, Human Factors and Management Issues

The Tele/Presence Forum (http://www.telepresence.org) announced a new library of technical terms on telepresence and related topics. Initially, there are more than one hundred visually-animated terms related to tele-presence, telepresence, teleconferencing, audio conferencing, audio, computer conferencing aka Microsoft SharePoint® (group conferencing), video technology, and other aspects of tele-presence and part of an animated library of more than 3,000 tutorials available at http://www.techtionary.com. Here is a sample of the terms on telepresence:

- Anti-Aliased Display
- Acoustic Echo
- Atoms - MP4
- Color - International Standard
- CMYK-Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black
- Composite Video
- Component Video
- Chroma Subsampling
- Cr/Cb/Y Video

Part 2 – Telepresence Visualized Dictionary

Tele/Presence Forum – “Innovations in Being There Without Going There”
Tele-Library – Technology Visualized – “Putting Motion to the Notion”

Tele/Presence Forum Explains Trends, Technology, Human Factors and Management Issues

The Tele/Presence Forum (http://www.telepresence.org) announced a new library of technical terms on telepresence and related topics. Initially, there are more than one hundred visually-animated terms related to tele-presence, telepresence, teleconferencing, audio conferencing, audio, computer conferencing aka Microsoft SharePoint® (group conferencing), video technology, and other aspects of tele-presence and part of an animated library of more than 3,000 tutorials available at http://www.techtionary.com. Here is a sample of the terms on telepresence:

- Deflection Yoke - CRT
- DVB-T-Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial
- Dither - Gamma - Video Display
- Dot Pitch - CRT
- dB-deciBel - dBi, dBm, dBSPL
- FPS-Frames Per Second – Video
- Fx-Tx - Media Converter
- 4:4:4/4:2:2/4:1:1/4:2:0 Video

Part 3 – Telepresence Visualized Dictionary

Tele/Presence Forum – “Innovations in Being There Without Going There”
Tele-Library – Technology Visualized – “Putting Motion to the Notion”

Tele/Presence Forum Explains Trends, Technology, Human Factors and Management Issues

The Tele/Presence Forum (http://www.telepresence.org) announced a new library of technical terms on telepresence and related topics. Initially, there are more than one hundred visually-animated terms related to tele-presence, telepresence, teleconferencing, audio conferencing, audio, computer conferencing aka Microsoft SharePoint® (group conferencing), video technology, and other aspects of tele-presence and part of an animated library of more than 3,000 tutorials available at http://www.techtionary.com. Here is a sample of the terms on telepresence:

- G.7xx - Audio & H.323 - Multi-Media
- Gamma - Video Display
- Gamut - Standard Color
- H.323 Multi-Media conferencing
- Hue - Standard Color
- Interlaced Scanning – video
- International Color Consortium

Part 4 – Telepresence Visualized Dictionary

Tele/Presence Forum – “Innovations in Being There Without Going There”
Tele-Library – Technology Visualized – “Putting Motion to the Notion”

Tele/Presence Forum Explains Trends, Technology, Human Factors and Management Issues

The Tele/Presence Forum (http://www.telepresence.org) announced a new library of technical terms on telepresence and related topics. Initially, there are more than one hundred visually-animated terms related to tele-presence, telepresence, teleconferencing, audio conferencing, audio, computer conferencing aka Microsoft SharePoint® (group conferencing), video technology, and other aspects of tele-presence and part of an animated library of more than 3,000 tutorials available at http://www.techtionary.com. Here is a sample of the terms on telepresence:

- LCD-Liquid Crystal Display
- Liquid-Crystal Switch: Optical
- Luminance – Color
- Magnetic Deflection Yoke – CRT
- Media Converter - Tx-Fx
- MP3-Motion Picture Experts Group
- MPEG1/2-Motion Pictures Expert

Part 5 – Telepresence Visualized Dictionary

Tele/Presence Forum – “Innovations in Being There Without Going There”
Tele-Library – Technology Visualized – “Putting Motion to the Notion”

Tele/Presence Forum Explains Trends, Technology, Human Factors and Management Issues

The Tele/Presence Forum (http://www.telepresence.org) announced a new library of technical terms on telepresence and related topics. Initially, there are more than one hundred visually-animated terms related to tele-presence, telepresence, teleconferencing, audio conferencing, audio, computer conferencing aka Microsoft SharePoint® (group conferencing), video technology, and other aspects of tele-presence and part of an animated library of more than 3,000 tutorials available at http://www.techtionary.com. Here is a sample of the terms on telepresence:


- MP4/MPEG4-Motion Pictures Expert Group
- NABTS-North American Basic Teletext
- Oersted - Video Deflection
- Overcrank/Undercrank – Video
- Phosphors – CRT
- PCS-Profile Connection Space
- Progressive Scanning – video
- Pulldown – Video

Part 6 – Telepresence Visualized Dictionary

Tele/Presence Forum – “Innovations in Being There Without Going There”
Tele-Library – Technology Visualized – “Putting Motion to the Notion”

Tele/Presence Forum Explains Trends, Technology, Human Factors and Management Issues

The Tele/Presence Forum (http://www.telepresence.org) announced a new library of technical terms on telepresence and related topics. Initially, there are more than one hundred visually-animated terms related to tele-presence, telepresence, teleconferencing, audio conferencing, audio, computer conferencing aka Microsoft SharePoint® (group conferencing), video technology, and other aspects of tele-presence and part of an animated library of more than 3,000 tutorials available at http://www.techtionary.com. Here is a sample of the terms on telepresence:

- Pull/pushcasting in content delivery nets
- Pulse - width, rise/fall time
- Printing - RBG-CMYK Transforms
- Push Model - Dense Mode
- Quantizing
- Quantizing - MPEG4
- RGB-Red-Green-Blue
- Ripper-MP3-Motion Picture Experts

Part 7 – Telepresence Visualized Dictionary

Tele/Presence Forum – “Innovations in Being There Without Going There”
Tele-Library – Technology Visualized – “Putting Motion to the Notion”

Tele/Presence Forum Explains Trends, Technology, Human Factors and Management Issues

The Tele/Presence Forum (http://www.telepresence.org) announced a new library of technical terms on telepresence and related topics. Initially, there are more than one hundred visually-animated terms related to tele-presence, telepresence, teleconferencing, audio conferencing, audio, computer conferencing aka Microsoft SharePoint® (group conferencing), video technology, and other aspects of tele-presence and part of an animated library of more than 3,000 tutorials available at http://www.techtionary.com. Here is a sample of the terms on telepresence:


- Sampling-Quantizing-MP3
- Shadow Mask – CRT
- Streaming video
- Streaming (pre-fetching) memory buffers
- SPT-Shortest Path Tree
- Source Tree – Multicasting
- SP-Spare Mode – Multicasting
- T.120 - H.323 - Multi-Media conferencing

Part 8 – Telepresence Visualized Dictionary

Tele/Presence Forum – “Innovations in Being There Without Going There”
Tele-Library – Technology Visualized – “Putting Motion to the Notion”

Tele/Presence Forum Explains Trends, Technology, Human Factors and Management Issues

The Tele/Presence Forum (http://www.telepresence.org) announced a new library of technical terms on telepresence and related topics. Initially, there are more than one hundred visually-animated terms related to tele-presence, telepresence, teleconferencing, audio conferencing, audio, computer conferencing aka Microsoft SharePoint® (group conferencing), video technology, and other aspects of tele-presence and part of an animated library of more than 3,000 tutorials available at http://www.techtionary.com. Here is a sample of the terms on telepresence:

- Triad - CRT Display
- T-Transform – Color
- Trees - Source, Shared, Multicast
- Undercrank/Overcrank – Video
- VBI-Vertical Blanking Interval
- Video Scanning Technology
- Video Streaming Case Study

Part 9 – Telepresence Visualized Dictionary

Tele/Presence Forum – “Innovations in Being There Without Going There”
Tele-Library – Technology Visualized – “Putting Motion to the Notion”

Tele/Presence Forum Explains Trends, Technology, Human Factors and Management Issues

The Tele/Presence Forum (http://www.telepresence.org) announced a new library of technical terms on telepresence and related topics. Initially, there are more than one hundred visually-animated terms related to tele-presence, telepresence, teleconferencing, audio conferencing, audio, computer conferencing aka Microsoft SharePoint® (group conferencing), video technology, and other aspects of tele-presence and part of an animated library of more than 3,000 tutorials available at http://www.techtionary.com. Here is a sample of the terms on telepresence:

- Video Switching Branch eXchange
- Voice and Video Compression
- VIR-Vertical Interval Reference
- Video Subsampling
- Web conferencing - audio bridging
- Y-Luminance – Color
- YIQ-YUV – Video