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Part 3 on Telepresence: We Get Called a Videohead. Ouch.
Someone calling himself or herself "Rob Hoyt" and claiming to be a "Consultant" sent us this email today about his reaction to two posts (here and here) where we wrote about "telepresence" with the question: From an end-user's perspective, what's the difference between telepresence and videoconferencing? Here's "Rob Hoyt's" full note, which calls us a "videohead." Such a meany. We're hurt. We analyze and comment on it below.
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RE: The Fussy Challenge
After reading this article I've finally come to the conclusion that you need to do a better screening your "writers". Whoever wrote this has NO idea what Telepresence is, and the best part is he asking the readers to please tell him the difference between TP and VC. Well if he/she got off their lazy ass and did some research you'd find out and tell us. This person must be a video head from the picturetel days, left the business and is pissed he missed the boat.
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Our reply to this note:
After reading this article I've finally come to the conclusion that you need to do a better screening your "writers".
CN: After reading this sentence, we've come to the conclusion that you need to do a better screening of what you write, as its logic, punctuation, and grammar leaves something to be desired. You haven't really hooked us with that opening, Rob.
Whoever wrote this has NO idea what Telepresence is, and the best part is he asking the readers to please tell him the difference between TP and VC.
CN: Rob, wake up and smell the intelligence of the community. Publishing isn't top-down authoritarian anymore. It's the Web 2.0 wisdom of the crowds and reaching out to your readers to allow them to share their smarts with the community is what it's about. Indeed, we have a different view and opinion about the term telepresence than many in the conferencing community, but we still welcome their thoughts and have published them. And by the way, none of their responses changed our minds about the terms telepresence and videconferencing from the point of view of end-users.
Well if he/she got off their lazy ass and did some research you'd find out and tell us.
CN: Rob, who are you addressing? He/she, or us? And it's his/her lazy ass following your gender usage convention, not "their lazy ass." Your language skills need work. Moreover, by saying "find out and tell us" you're being inconsistent by implying that we haven't told you, yet you're criticizing what we've, by your account, evidently told you. You're confused. ...Here's what we'll tell you, as we've addressed and alluded to in the two blog posts about telepresence. A cursory search about what telepresence is will confirm its original and even present-day meaning (outside of recent videoconferencing vendor marketing) rooted in science fiction, virtual reality system research, and applied robotics and man-machine interfaces and haptic technologies to control distant machinery. It's our view that some vendors in the video conferencing industry have hijacked appropriated and co-opted the sexy, deeper-meaning, sci-fi "telepresence" term (of which video with a remote location is a common feature) to sell a much improved generation of videoconferencing systems. Great idea! But it's the same thing: video and conferencing - just higher quality and better system housing and conference room design - right down to paint color of the walls in the conference room. It's a new iteration of videoconferencing for the conference room along the natural evolutionary path of technology. It's ultimately a marketing tactic to attempt to create curiosity, differentiation and get buzz, but it has as much to do with conference room design as anything else. It might well be successful for those marketing objectives. However, for end-users, it's still video conferencing in the same way that television is the word we used to describe the flat-panel HD television set connected to cable that we watched last night. We watched Gilligans Island in the early 70s too - on television (and last night on Nick.)
But remember, Rob, our question posed is "From an end-users perspective, what's the difference between telepresence and videconferencing." End-users are too often forgotten. Let me ask you, Rob: What should users of so-called telepresence systems call their meetings? Please give us a noun. And when these users do the action of working with a telepresence system, what's the verb? It seems like none other than Cisco had a problem with this "telepresence" word, system on Fox's Vanished television program. Point proven.
We think users over the long term will unlikely change sentences like "I have a videoconference at 3pm" or "I'm videoconferencing with them later." And with good reason: Not only are there no easy, flow-off-the-tongue terms around "telepresence" but the term videoconference/ing fits for end-users in describing what they're doing. They're conferencing with the predominate media being video.
Again, we think the term "telepresence" - as manifested in today's videoconferencing systems - is a marketing term to create buzz and differentiate at the high-end, and it appears to be effective so far. Yet after the continued decrease in hardware, software and communication costs and increase in performance and image quality and in the realm of everyone eventually using it, not just some wealthy enterprises - it's still going to be a videoconference to end-users. The only people who don't like the term "videoconference" now are the vendors and consultants with a new bag of goods to sell, and a relatively very few corporate customers who love to say that their videoconferencing system "collects dust" in the corner. Telepresence is a new coat of marketing paint on some nice new videoconferencing systems in tricked-out conference rooms.
Video communication technology - and human practices of its use - will over time meld together, and whether we call it videoconferencing or a simple "video call" (the legacy language of telephony may remain), it's doubtful end-users will actually call anything "telepresence" in their daily routines of meeting remotely. It's amusing to know that the interface to the Cisco Telepresence system is a telephone. "Video calls" and "videoconferencing" aren't going away from an end-users' points of view or language usage - at least not with today's so-called telepresence systems.
This person must be a video head from the picturetel days, left the business and is pissed he missed the boat.
CN: Disparagingly calling someone a "video head" doesn't quite have the same punch as calling someone a Bellhead - which we suspect is the environment you've worked in. And now you're a consultant who uses an "@excite.com" email address. Very hip. ...Who missed the boat, Rob? ...Anyway, calling someone a "video head" in the context of your muttonheaded missive to us about telepresence suggests you think telepresence is for ...what? Head and shoulders? The Full