IMMERSCOM 2009

The thought was a good one, or so it seemed at the time. Gather the designers and key users of these new Video Immersive environments -- known as HP Halo, or Cisco Telepresence, or LifeSize, or pick your favorite other system (e.g. Polycom, Tandberg, Vidyo...) -- and have a deep and penetrating conference about what works, and what needs improvement, for these new tools.

Put it in Silicon Valley, the mecca for innovation, and you "can't miss". Well, we reckoned without the dire economy, even though these tools are one of the best ways to mitigate costs by eliminating most travel needs and enhancing the teamwork and hence productivity of designers. So, the conference has about half as many attendees as we'd have liked, which means that we'll be lucky to break even.

But today, at MediaX, we hosted Casey King, the CTO for LifeSize, who described a company that has doubled every year for the last five, with now some 10,000 companies using their products, with High Definition Video for relatively low cost, and his enthusiasm was palpable, as it was for the host company, Sun Microsystems, which reported on the productivity increases due to such tools.

And Thursday, we'll tour HP and Cisco facilities to experience first-hand these wonder tools. If you haven't been in one of these uber-centers, run rather than walk to experience this stuff.

Why so few attendees? Could be the esoteric titles on the papers, or it could be the time of year or the travel budget issue, or maybe there is no capital equipment money even if things looked great. Or maybe people are so "heads-down" that they have no capacity to consider change?

Seems odd to me. It feels strangely like the old joke about the machine gun salesman showing up at the castle, and the wife explaining that her knight doesn't have time to listen, because he is putting on his suit of armor and mounting his horse to go fight in the Crusades.

Ah well. We'll have a great time