Finally, a year after Cisco unveiled its TelePresence 3000 suite, I had the telepresence experience, conferencing with Cisco spokespeople in San Jose over a set of announcements that'll be made public tomorrow. And while you're never going to have the illusion that you're in the same room, it's a remarkably natural meeting experience.
If you haven't seen Cisco's high-end TelePresence product, the suite involves three large HD displays, and a semi-circular conference table. The tables are designed such that the table in the communicating conference suite appears to be a continuation on the TV screen. This is to produce the illusion that you're all at the same table. It doesn't work, for a couple of reasons.
First up, we're talking three 65-inch plasma screens tiled across the wall of the suite. HD or no, the image looks transmitted. I couldn't help but think that our conferencers from San Jose were perhaps a little larger than life-sized. And throughout the first part of the conference, I just could not put my finger on what was not quite right.
"Can you all look directly at me?" I asked. They looked at me. Actually, they looked about three feet past my left shoulder.
They are looking at an image of me on the screen, as am I of them. (Okay, put your seatbelt on, this is a little difficult to explain.) Those images are transmitted by three cameras mounted above those screen. So if you are sitting toward the left side of the conference table -- as I was -- people in the other suite are looking off to their right (still my left) rather than straight at the cameras. Thus, they don't appear to be looking at me.
Unless, of course, I'm sitting in the centre of the table, which I also tried. Then, when conferencers look at someone to my left, they appear to be looking at someone to my left. But when they're looking at me, they appear to everyone else at the table as if they're looking them in the face.
I'm told that, with experience, you get used to that. (It reminds me of an experiment in which a group of college students had to wear prismatic glasses that turned everything upside down; after a while, the brain corrected for it. Then when they took the glasses off, it took a while for the brain to uncorrect for it. Which makes me wonder whether, after a long telepresence session, I'd find myself looking a little over the shoulder of every one I meet who's not directly in front of me.) There were other quirks -- jewellery leapt of the screen, for example -- but, all in, you pretty quickly forget the medium. The meeting experience is remarkably natural, the technology stays out of the way. And how often do you wave goodbye after a conference call?