UK-based Coventry University’s Immersive Telepresence in Theatre project is crossing the pond for a special performance in Miami. Through the use of video conferencing software, the project enables actors and performing arts lecturers to work together across the globe as though they were in the same rehearsal space. Collaborations between Tampere University in Finland, Adam […]

Many years ago, I worked for a facilities-based CLEC selling POTS (plain old telephone services), DSL, T1 (1.5 Mbps), bonded T1 lines (3 Mbps), phone systems and VoIP (voice-over-IP) solutions. This experience helped me to really understand the business criticality of quality-of-service internet bandwidth and continues to help me to this day. After IT/telecom, I […]

Jabra announced today that Zoom Video Communications, Inc. selected the Jabra PanaCast as the video solution for its new telepresence capability, Zoom Rooms Speaker Switching. Announced this week at Zoomtopia, Zoom’s user conference, the Zoom Rooms Speaker Switching is an added feature to Zoom Rooms. (Zoom Rooms equips every sized conference room with all of […]

If you read our industry press at all (and I hope you do) you will note large numbers of articles on two subjects: 1. The “Huddle Room” and 2. Drones When two subjects like these fascinate an industry, it is almost inevitable that they combine in some way. (I consider this the “you got peanut […]

Last week, I attended Oculus Connect, the conference for Facebook/Oculus virtual reality developers. It was one of the best glimpses I have yet seen into the uses of a new technology that will change the way we do business in industries with events or communication and collaboration with remote people (rental and staging, collaboration, education, […]

With the new branding, AVIXA appears to have picked up a new motto, one which many of us have seen on the various promotional items for sale in the AVIXA store at InfoComm: “Together, we can change the way people experience the world.” Those who know me I believe in language, and believe in having […]

By David Danto and Andrew W. Davis The year was 2006.  Videoconferencing had been used in the corporate world for more than ten years — and everyone hated it. It failed to meet the promises of reducing travel costs and providing easy, “just like being there” experiences. Enterprise AV was really no better. Huge boardrooms […]

By Chip Manning VDO360 Videoconferencing is not new, but recent technological advancements—including mobile videoconferencing and telepresence—have led to more widespread use. On the other hand, the Internet of Things (IoT) is a relatively new idea, one with implications across a wide variety of industries and aspects of business. When the two technologies—videoconferencing and the IoT—come […]

Over the last couple of months, a lot of the articles here on rAVePubs have had to do with new technology adoption, and the costs involved with being either too early or too late with any new technology. I am a long-suffering “Innovator” (for those of you who have read Crossing the Chasm, something I […]

The stack of publications was piling up on the corner of my desk. I thought it was about time to read them.  There were so many articles about using tech in our schools; tech to collaborate, tech to teach, tech to produce content, on and on. I had to stop and ask myself, “What did […]

By David Danto IMCCA This article originally ran in my my Network World column “Workspaces for Tomorrow” earlier in the year. Enterprise videoconferencing has been around in one form or another for decades. The space has been – and continues to be — owned by many diverse silos (facilities, AV, IT, UC) which is one […]

Will new headsets and more powerful phones pave the way for brain-controlled smartphone apps? Imagine calling your friends through the power of thought? According to an IBM and Xerox paper (*) summarizing the state-of-the-art in Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI), applications may well be developed including brain-driven software for dialing numbers, as well as for messaging and calling […]

As some may have noticed in the profile description on the webpage, as well as if anyone has checked out my LinkedIn profile, you’ll notice the Convergent Tech Project which I’ve described as one which leverages technologies in audio visual, IT, video conferencing, Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC), cloud-hosted and virtual machine technologies, mobility/BYOD, Internet of […]

Last week my fellow consultants and I were invited to an event at conferencing stalwart Polycom’s New York City experience center. It’s a pretty and shiny new spot at One Penn Plaza, with a nice river view outside and their technological toys inside. For me the more interesting part isn’t the specifics of a single […]

After what I considered a highly successful trip to Enterprise Connect last month as media for rAVe, it’s time to turn focus to InfoComm and UCC in the audio visual space. When you consider the realm of Unified Communications and Collaboration, it is no doubt one of the (if not the) most visible sectors of […]

Vaddio has added two new cameras to the RoboSHOT series, the RoboSHOT 12 HDMI and RoboSHOT 30 HDMI. Both feature HDMI out, Ethernet for IP control, a better image signal processor (ISP) and Vaddio’s Tri-Synchronous Motion. The RoboSHOT HDMI series is designed for simplicity in applications that only need HDMI video. Control functionality is accomplished […]

Revolve Robotics today announced KUBI Video 2.0 — the latest version of its video collaboration app for its flagship KUBI telepresence platform. Japanese for neck, KUBI is a robotic cradle plus app for tablets that is basically a telepresence solution. KUBI leverages the consumer conferencing capabilities of tablets by introducing a robotic platform or cradle […]

Barco and Vidyo jointly announced a partnership this week. In case you don’t know Vidyo, it’s a provider of cloud-based HD and UHD video conferencing solutions. The plan is to integrate Vidyo into Barco’s TransForm C enterprise collaboration solution to enable high-quality universal VTC communications. This will be demo’d at ISE next week in Amsterdam […]

By Cindy Davis InfoComm international Until fairly recently, when technology managers got a request to set up videoconferencing and collaboration systems, the options were separated by a chasm of options and price. At one end were very expensive, immersive telepresence rooms offering the highest quality audio, video and collaboration technologies to enable remote meetings. At […]

Well, June approaches again, and with it, among other things, comes the InfoComm show. And I don’t mean InfoComm Patagonia or InfoComm New Zealand or whatever they’re up to these days. I mean the original, accept-no-substitutes, convince-the-boss-I-NEED to-go, InfoComm show. Actually, that’s not to disparage InfoComm’s ever-widening pantheon of AV shows around the world. I […]

IMCCA, the videoconferencing and telepresence association, has announced its training schedule for InfoComm 2014. Sessions include: State of the Industry Lunch and Learn: Wednesday June 18th, 12:15 PM – 2:00 PM Join industry experts and senior executives as they address the latest issues related to conferencing, collaboration, and unified communications. How are mobility and interoperability […]

By Monica Heck Special to InfoComm International Whether you call it simply unified communications (UC) or you also throw collaboration into the mix (UCC), it’s clear that this years-old-yet-bleeding-edge technology has finally gained its footing. Even if you struggle to define the collection of videoconferencing, chat, email and other solutions that fall under the UC […]

Infonetics Research has released excerpts from its 2Q13 Enterprise Telepresence and Video Conferencing Equipment report, which tracks dedicated and PBX-based video conferencing and telepresence infrastructure and endpoints: There’s now evidence the videoconferencing market is bouncing back. “After a tumultuous 2012 that saw growth in the videoconferencing market screech to a halt, sales returned to year-over-year […]

On August 1st, I was an attendee at a high level Health Information Technology (HIT) meeting in Washington DC, as an invited guest of the National eHealth Collaborative. The National eHealth Collaborative (NeHC) is a public-private partnership that accelerates effective use of health IT to create a more patient and family centered healthcare system with […]

Alright, it’s the last week of the AVPhenom Press Release Challenge, and as such, I wanted to make it hard on myself I guess.  I didn’t get any nominations this week, so I had to dig into the nominations of the past couple weeks.  I wanted to rewrite one fellow BlogSquad writer Lee Distad sent […]

Leon’s Horizon Interactive Series, intended for telepresence and videoconferencing systems in corporate environments, are optimized for vocal clarity and a wide sound stage, giving the sense of different people in different places. The Horizon Interactive Personal Unit speakers (for single displays) and Multi-Display speakers (for any number of panels) combine sound and HD video all […]

The pervasive theme at InfoComm for Cisco was all about collaboration. The company actually demonstrated a partnership with Prysm on a telepresence solution, but one of the cooler new things at InfoComm had to be their iRobot solution. Dubbed the Ava 500, Cisco and iRobot signed a joint marketing agreement to get the portable telepresence […]

By Snorre Kjesbu Over the past decade, I’ve worked on a number of different projects aimed at improving communications using video conferencing and telepresence. In that time, I’ve been fortunate to be involved with key innovations at first Tandberg then Cisco that have had great impact on video collaboration: Forging life-like experience with immersive telepresence […]

Despite the tough economic environment, sales of telepresence hardware, software and services grew to $567 million in 2009, says ABI Research in a new study. “Nearly any size company has access to telepresence and video conferencing services,” says David Lemelin, director of the ABI’s Enterprise Communications Research Service. “Suppliers are helping businesses transition to telepresence […]

In addition to simplified dialing, Polycom has also further simplified the user experience of their Telepresence line of products by automating screen layouts, voice activated room switching for multi-site calls and Polycom telepresence solutions support interoperability with leading unified communications platforms from Avaya, Microsoft, IBM, Broadsoft, Cisco and others. Although Cisco is perceived to be […]

A humongous company entering an existing market tends to validate it, and that’s what Cisco will do for high definition video conferencing with the company’s announcement of its new TelePresence product. Sure, companies such as PolyVision, Polycom, TANDBERG, ClearOne, VTEL and Sony slogged through this market for years before technology caught up with what they […]

By Gary Kayye, CTS When I saw the Cisco’s version of HD videoconferencing, called Cisco TelePresence, I was extremely impressed, as I have been with all the HD-based VTC systems.  But, when I started to ask a question of Cisco, I was stopped mid-sentence and told this was, “not videoconferencing; that’s a bad word with […]