Second Life, ooVoo and Connecting Around the World

Chatting with Phillip at ooVoo yesterday I was telling him that my husband Bill was impresed with the technology and the people when he experienced ooVoo day with me in February - in fact so much so that he had already used ooVoo to hold a voice and video meeting involving participants in three of his offices.

Phillip said that some new goodies will soon be released that may make these conferences even better, and I passed this on to Bill who, though not the IT guy in the firm, feels that his department can be served by some new looks at the way they approach communication across multiple states and different offices.

This conversation came to mind later when I was catching up with virtual worlds expert and futurist Tao Takashi's blog (mr topf in Second Life)

In talking with Jeanette Gibson, Director of New Media Communications at Cisco they cover options for interacting with employees around the world

 Jeanette: ... In Second Life for example, I can meet with teams in Europe and feel more connected to them.

mrtopf: How does that compare to e.g. video conferencing, phone conferences etc.?
Jeanette: I’d say that Second Life is better than a phone call or webcast. You get the sense of physical proximity. But it’s not as good as our Telepresence technology that is virtual meetings, you can see the real person. With globalisation this is so critical, having many ways to reach people.

mrtopf: Telepresence though is a bit too expensive for many right now but it looks impressive.
Jeanette: yes, it’s for large businesses now, companies that have many branch offices and need to connect, it’s $100,000 -$300,000. But someday we’ll have telepresence in our homes.

You know, I'm not the tech guru here so I have to ask about the difference between the video conferencing via computer that ooVoo does and the teleconferencing that Jeanette and Tao are talking about. Sounds like one primary difference is lots of dollar signs.

Beyond the dollar signs people have fun meeting in Second Life and also via ooVoo - will video conferencing ever be the same?

And ooVoo is putting their dollar signs in a pretty important place, donating to the frozen Pea Fund, which counts for something as far as building community.

In the end, with ooVoo, as with Second Life, the fun is in the process of participation- no matter where we chose to have the conversation. The most important thing is to take part.

Comments

[paul]

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