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Receive daily CN Alert emails with breaking headlines in the conferencing industry. The Launch of the BT Customer Experience Center in NYC
BT is without peer as a telecom brand. Cosmopolitan and international, they do things with flair and style - and success. They're anything but stodgy. Last night's ribbon-cutting event for their new Customer Experience Center in the airy, transparent design of Renzo Piano's New York Times Building is a case in point. Hanif Lanai, CEO of BT Global Services cut the ribbon to formally open their new "Customer Experience Center" (CEC) for US customers. We were too buzzed distracted in sucking down Heinekens and failed to get that on video, but we did manage to do quickie interviews with BT Conferencing CEO Aaron McCormack and Polycom CEO Bob Hagerty, see above and below. Here at this new center, the telepresence technologies of Polycom, Cisco and Tandberg, along with the latest unified communications and collaboration (UCC) offerings from Microsoft, Polycom, Cisco, HP, can be seen.
Quick impressions of this BT event:
Best-in-Showcase: Polycom
In BT's new CEC, Polycom has the most impressive room for its videoconferencing telepresence system. The room is beautifully designed for its purpose - a showcase - and in terms of "experience" it beats out the Cisco's and Tandberg's experiences in their respective telepresence showcase rooms. In terms of the actual mediated experience in videoconferencing with people at remote locations, we'd also give the winning edge to Polycom. While the sound could improve a bit, the Polycom telepresence visuals are spectacular. Cisco's backgrounds to the people your meeting with were a muddy brown-ish color, which is sort of a downer, particularly if you're already taking anti-depressants from spending countless hours stuck in the office because your boss says you can't travel anymore. Tandberg's backgrounds to the person we spoke with were sky blue. This was presented as a nice feature, but we kept expecting a jet, a cloud, a kite, or a parachuting Elliot Gold to appear behind the woman we chatted with at the other end. If you want to get natural and "immersive" you can't have people you're meeting with floating in the sky. However, all of these systems are impressive, and we'd encourage you to make an appointment to see them in action.
Best-in-Chat: Aaron McCormack
We always enjoy catching up with BT Conferencing CEO, Aaron McCormack. Affable, smart and successful at BT Conferencing, he was also one of the first people to personally sign up for CN's Key People Directory and now he's even on Twitter. Being accessible on and experimenting with social media as a CEO of a large company suggests to us that Aaron "gets it" and that bodes well for BT.
Best-in-Color: Purple
Who knew? Our Conferencing News name-tag badges had a purple stripe, as distinct from other attendees, such as customers and vendor partners. Come to find out, this purple stripe marked us as "Influencers" to the attentive and accommodating BT people working the room. ...Aha! This explains everything that happened up until 4:30am. What a night!
August 20, 2009
