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4-27-2010 - in this issue:
- Top-10 Tele/Presence Audio Design Tips - Part 3 #8 Clipping Dipping,
#9 Troubleshooting and #10 Knowledgebase
- Tele/Presence Forum Expo
With Keynote Speeches from University of Wisconsin, International Digital Media Experts, Tele/Presence Visionaries and others.
- Cisco's Tim Szigeti Speaks at Expo (see topic below) and everyone gets his book "Cisco TelePresence Fundamentals."
- Building a Collaborative "Green" Culture via Tele/Presence - Part 2 - 3 of 6 Steps - Challenge-Concept-Collaboration
- "Essence of Tele/Presence" in 101-Seconds - Exciting Dialogic video explains the "essence" of unified communications
- Tele/Presence "Tele-Library" 100 key concepts from the 3,000+ terms in the TECHtionary.com library. |
Welcome to Tele/Presence Forum
Simply put, Tele/Presence extends and complements Presence in Unified Communications.
Tele/Presence Forum Expo - Boulder - Sept 28-30 at the St. Julien Hotel (www.stjulien.com) with keynotes from International Tele/Presence experts, audio, video, group, room and human factors. See below for keynote and exhibitor/attendee information or check here.
WIN an Apple iPad for paid attendees at Tele/Presence Forum - must be present for drawing.
 
Click here to register.
Come see exciting solutions from:
Fontel Presents Tele/Presence Solutions
Fontel, Inc. is a wholesale distributor specializing in MCS-Microsoft Communications Serveer optimized end-point devices. Our GN Jabra headsets offer a seamless intuitive communication experience. Jabra has been working with Microsoft since the very first deployment. Today, Jabra offers the most extensive portfolio of headset solutions optimized for the tele/presence the market. We also offer optimized web camera's and speakerphones! Call us at 800-238-0787 - begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 800-238-0787 end_of_the_skype_highlightingsales@fontel.com or visit our web site at www.fontel.com |
NEWS - Cisco's Tim Szigeti Speaks at T/P Expo and signs his book "Cisco TelePresence Fundamentals."
Speech Title: Best Practices: TelePresence Design
- TelePresence Technologies Overview
- Simplicity, Quality & Reliability
- TelePresence "Best Practices"
- System
- Room
Tim Szigeti, CCIE#9794, is a Technical Leader in the Enterprise Systems Engineering team at Cisco Systems. His role is to design network architectures for the next wave of medianet applications, including TelePresence, IP video surveillance, digital media systems and desktop video. He has also specialized in Quality of Service technologies for the past decade, during which he has authored many technical papers, including the Enterprise QoS Design Guide and the TelePresence Design guide. He has also co-authored the Cisco Press Books: End-to-End QoS Network Design and Cisco TelePresence Fundamentals.
All paid attendees to the Tele/Presence Forum Expo will receive a copy these "green" ebooks.
624+ page ebook ebook.
&
Tele/Conferencing
Linking People Together Digitally (2010)
by
Thomas B. Cross
A humorous example of a face-to-face (F2F) meeting. People say they prefer F2F but when you consider all the issues in human communications, then consider how communication changes in a tele/presence meeting. It's not that tele/presence is that great, it's that F2F are generally not that great either. |
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Tele/Presence Forum Expo Keynote Speech
From Teleconferencing to Telepresence
Making Virtual Meetings Work For You
Hal Josephson - President of MediaSense
· A brief history -- thirty years of tele-meetings - what will meetings be like 30 years from now
· Best practices -- developing valuable tele-skills - enhancing human communications with tele/presence
· Creative techniques applied: lessons learned - what has failed and what will it take to succeed
Hal Josephson is President of MediaSense, a San Francisco firm that specializes in international business development, strategic marketing/communication and special project planning management services for high-tech businesses. Hal works extensively Pacific Rim companies focusing on assisting partnerships and alliances with Chinese companies. In addition, Hal is the annual Program Chair, Executive Producer and Host of the annual Digital Entertainment Leadership Forum (DELF) and the Cyberport Venture Capital Forum (CVCF) in Hong Kong, China.
Hal has specific industry experience in satellite communications, teleconferencing, interactive media, IP licensing, as well as conference design, event promotion and media production, with decades of experience in international business development and strategic marketing.
Hal was a co-founder of the International Teleconferencing Assn. (ITS) and has served on the Board of Directors of the Australian-American Chamber of Commerce. Hal has been an Advisor to New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, The Banff New Media Institute and the City of San Jose.
Hal was a founding instructor of San Francisco State University's Multimedia Studies Program, and is co-author of the book, Careers in Multimedia: Roles and Resources. In addition, Hal has authored a variety of articles about communication and media in diverse publications including Digital Media, New Scientist, NewMedia, Information Week SMB,
Conferenza, New Zealand Business and Australia's Metro Magazine.
Hal has keynoted more than 100 industry events during his career, both nationally and internationally, and has appeared as a guest speaker at the World Congress for Information Technology, in Adelaide, Australia, at Unitec's New Zealand Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and at Calgary, Alberta's Westlink Innovation Center. Hal's presentations include: "Doing Effective Business in a Shifting World Marketplace", "Smart Marketing for Entrepreneurial Businesses" and "Business Development by Design: Strategies that Generate Results".
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Understanding and Troubleshooting Video Conferencing Networks
Presented by Gary Thom, President, Delta Information Systems &
Thomas Smith, Program Director, University of Wisconsin
· The bulk of installed systems are H.323 compliant, how can H.323 work with SIP and other standards and protocols
· How does the ITU H.323 and SIP standards support advanced audio and video features
· What are the common problems in videoconferencing networks
For more on University of Wisconsin - Department of Engineering Professional Development Programs - click here |
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"The Essence of Tele/Presence" in 101 Seconds click here
Courtesy: Dialogic
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Featured Tele/Presence Expo Speaker
"The Future of Inter-Company Visual Collaboration. . . Today!"
This presentation will address:
- Building a Business Case and Modeling ROI for Tele/Presence
- The rising hard, soft, and opportunity cost of Tele/Presence
- Balancing Physical Travel Versus Tele/Presence
- Utilizing Tele/Presence for Economic Development and Global Expansion
- Enhancing and Accelerating Revenue Growth via Tele/Presence
- Integrating Tele/Presence into the Supply Chain for Improvement Channel Partner Communications
Howard S. Lichtman is a productivity-focused technology futurist, author, publisher and consultant with specialties in telepresence and visual collaboration to improve organizational and personal productivity. He is the founder and president of the Human Productivity Lab, an independent consultancy and research firm that helps organizations design telepresence strategies and deploy telepresence solutions. He is the publisher of Telepresence Options, the #1 website on the Internet covering the telepresence revolution and editor of the Telepresence Options Telegraph, the world's most widely read publication covering telepresence technologies.
Mr. Lichtman is also the author and/or co-author of The Inter-Company Telepresence and Videoconferencing Handbook (2009), The Telepresence and Videoconferencing Exchange Review(2010), Telepresence, Effective Visual Collaboration and the Future of Global Business at the Speed of Light (2006), and Emerging Technologies for Teleconferencing and Telepresence (2005). He is currently working on Telepresence Options 2010. |
Top-10 Tele/Presence Audio Design Tips
Part 3 of 3
Click here for animated tutorial
Remember like the adage, "It's the economy stupid. In tele/presence, "it's not audio, its noise."
There are many kinds of noise, echo (discussed in the future), machine noise, static and others. Noise drives us nuts, ruins meetings and even kills. According to TopicPulse.com, "More than 600,000 potential years of healthy life are lost in Europe each year due to noise-related death and disability, New Scientist magazine reported. Traffic noise alone may account for 3% of deaths from heart attacks and strokes in Europe. Chronic night-time exposure to noise levels of 50 decibels or above was enough to cause cardiovascular problems." Meanwhile, here in the U.S, OSHA regulations state that sound exposure limits before permanent hearing loss is as little as one hour at 100 dB (eight hours at 90 dB). In tele/presence terms, excessive noise can kill the meeting.
Design Tip #8 - Clipping & Dipping Voice clipping, chopping or dipping occurs as the result of the VAD-Voice Activity Detector. VADs are used for silence suppression in packet voice systems, due to the need not to use bandwidth to send packets when there is no voice; think of this as not sending silence. VAD also reduces or suppresses echo suppression in echo cancellers. In addition, VADs are used to reduce room or background noise in IP phones, speakerphones and microphones. VAD systems determine the difference between human voice, tones, unvoice, "white noise" (similar in concept to white light (composed of equal amounts of all visible light frequencies) - a sound composed of an equal mix of all audible frequencies) and comfort noise (noise generated to let the user know the call has not been disconnected) and other sources. If signal is below threshold, then the signal may be clipped (cut) as voice perceived as noise not voice is called "front end speech clipping." "Dipping" is clipping at the end of the voice segment.
There are three or more types of noise or non-noise detectors: known energy level, adaptive energy level and spectral energy based on compression. Related to and part of VAD configuration is Comfort Noise or tone.
Comfort Noise is the manufactured or artificial method of creating noise to alert the listener that the call has not been disconnected and/or the network is still operating. A human factor issue, comfort noise uses bandwidth to send nothing more than "white" noise.
Design Tip #9 - Troubleshooting
Here are just a few of the common problems and potential solutions.
- Crackling and crosstalk - check for poor cable connections, cable network design and electrical grounding.
- Static, hissing noise (white-constant, pink-less constant, brown-indescribable) - check the Voice Activity Detector (VAD).
- Hum ("60 cycles AC-Alternating Current") - check wiring may be too close to electrical power sources, wiring and transformers such as lighting, water/soda/vending fountains.
- Voice volume distortion of too loud, low, fuzzy, tinny - adjust or replace phoneset/softphone software.
Design Tip #10 - Build Knowledgebase
Build a "shared FAQ" (e.g. SharePoint) online help system for other designers and users. Provide the means for users to submit their compliments/complaints to improve/fix problems. Encourage users to complete evaluation forms and contact users on a random basis to determine what they like/dislike. Tele/presence has failed on many occasions because system administrators assume users are satisfied when they "speak with their feet" by returning to their old ways.
In coming issues of this Tele/Presence Forum Newsletter, we will explore the delays and issues related to customer acceptance of tele/presence and the changing landscape moving forward. |
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Green House Gas Saving Calculators
Here are two calculators for your planning purposes. While green cost savings are often perceived is the principal "hard dollar" savings, other hard dollars result from reduced sales cycle, faster product-to-market, reduced communications disfusion costs, and others.
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Building a Collaborative "Green" Culture via Tele/Presence
Part 2 - Steps 4-6:
Collaboration-Consensus-Completion
As I have said many times, "companies move at the speed of their communications. Those companies that communicate faster change the fastest and those companies that change the fastest will be the most successful."
4 - Collaboration-Social integration - A workplace ambiance where the employee enjoys a feeling of belonging and being a meaningful part of the whole organization. A collaborative climate encourages openness, a sense of community, freedom from prejudice, and personal equality irrespective of rank in the hierarchy. A collaborative culture encourages teamwork and group cooperation within and across organization units. Linkage of employee participation to the productive goals of the enterprises is enhanced with tele/presence. The recognition of individual creativity integrated into a corporate tele/collaborative social networking systems allows for individual expression via blogs. Group consensus is created via tele/presence video, wikis, shared work spaces, web conferences and videos placed on internal blogs and wikis.
5 - Consensus-Channel of Communications - tele/presence opens the channels of communications and to encourage the free and easy flow of ideas throughout the organization and to reward participation, to respond to ideas, and to explain decisions that reject ideas. Thus, participation via tele/presence is a self-perpetuating force that opens employees to new ideas and opens the organization to the ideas of its employees as well as sources such as channel partners, supply chains, customers and others.
6 - Completion-Life Space - Work should be a balanced part of the entire lifestyle. Work schedules, travel demands, career pressures, and overtime should operate within a balance of the needs and responsibilities for family, leisure, recreation and self-renewal. Management studies have shown the positive impact on productivity of an organizational structure that creates a foundation to build team processes via tele/presence. It also reduces the uncertainties associated with expanded employee involvement and participation, and recognizes areas of mutual need and support. One study found the positive effects from tele/presence on productivity of an organizational structure that specifically valued collaboration through open lines of communication. This study found that over half of the corporations with a management style that was collaborative lowered costs, improved worker productivity, and improved services.
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Tele/Presence Forum Tele-Library
"Innovations in Being There Without Going There"
Tele-Library - Technology Visualized - "Putting Motion to the Notion"
Tele/Presence Forum Explains Trends, Technology, Human Factors and Management Issues
The Tele/Presence Forum (http://www.telepresence.org) announced a new library of technical terms on telepresence and related topics. Initially, there are more than one hundred visually-animated terms related to tele-presence, telepresence, teleconferencing, audio conferencing, audio, computer conferencing aka Microsoft SharePointŪ (group conferencing), video technology, and other aspects of tele-presence and part of an animated library of more than 3,000 tutorials available at http://www.techtionary.com. Here is a sample of the terms on telepresence:
- Anti-Aliased Display
- Acoustic Echo
- Atoms - MP4
- Color - International Standard
- CMYK-Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black
- Composite Video
- Component Video
- Chroma Subsampling
- Cr/Cb/Y Video
- Deflection Yoke - CRT
- DVB-T-Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial
- Dither - Gamma - Video Display
- Dot Pitch - CRT
- dB-deciBel - dBi, dBm, dBSPL
- FPS-Frames Per Second - Video
- Fx-Tx - Media Converter
- 4:4:4/4:2:2/4:1:1/4:2:0 Video
- G.7xx - Audio & H.323 - Multi-Media
- Gamma - Video Display
- Gamut - Standard Color
- H.323 Multi-Media conferencing
- Hue - Standard Color
- Interlaced Scanning - video
- International Color Consortium
- LCD-Liquid Crystal Display
- Liquid-Crystal Switch: Optical
- Luminance - Color
- Magnetic Deflection Yoke - CRT
- Media Converter - Tx-Fx
- MP3-Motion Picture Experts Group
- MPEG1/2-Motion Pictures Expert
- MP4/MPEG4-Motion Pictures Expert Group
- NABTS-North American Basic Teletext
- Oersted - Video Deflection
- Overcrank/Undercrank - Video
- Phosphors - CRT
- PCS-Profile Connection Space
- Progressive Scanning - video
- Pulldown - Video
- Pull/pushcasting in content delivery nets
- Pulse - width, rise/fall time
- Printing - RBG-CMYK Transforms
- Push Model - Dense Mode
- Quantizing
- Quantizing - MPEG4
- RGB-Red-Green-Blue
- Ripper-MP3-Motion Picture Experts
- Sampling-Quantizing-MP3
- Shadow Mask - CRT
- Streaming video
- Streaming (pre-fetching) memory buffers
- SPT-Shortest Path Tree
- Source Tree - Multicasting
- SP-Spare Mode - Multicasting
- T.120 - H.323 - Multi-Media conferencing
- Triad - CRT Display
- T-Transform - Color
- Trees - Source, Shared, Multicast
- Undercrank/Overcrank - Video
- VBI-Vertical Blanking Interval
- Video Scanning Technology
- Video Streaming Case Study
- Video Switching Branch eXchange
- Voice and Video Compression
- VIR-Vertical Interval Reference
- Video Subsampling
- Web conferencing - audio bridging
- Y-Luminance - Color
- YIQ-YUV - Video
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CrossTalk Named One of the Top-10 Telecommunications Blogs
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Free Technical "Just Enough Just-in-Time" Knowledge from:
The World's First and Largest Animated Library on Technology with more than 3,000 animated tutorials.
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Tele/Presence Forum provides education, research, and events designed to improve awareness of the benefits of tele/presence whether video, audio, computer, multi-media, web and other systems.
Among the many benefits, Tele/Presence can:
- Reduce sales cycles - and are proven to increase revenues
- Reduce business costs - travel, downtime, meeting delays, business processes
- Improve productivity - increased coordination yields improved customer communications
- Accelerates communications - faster communications means faster product cycles
- Reduce customer communications disasters - reduce impact of crisis situations |
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