A panel discussion that the Twitterverse is no doubt interested in - check out the Twitter cred of the participants.
Robert Scoble (Fast Company)
Guillaume Cohen (Veodia)
Gary Griffiths (LiteScape)
Loic Le Meur (Seesmic)
Alain Mowad (Polycom)
The panelists introduced themselves and their businesses/offerings. The panel ranges across the spectrum from super hi quality Cisco Telepresence systems down to Seesmic for low quality ad hoc solutions like Seesmic.
Loic Lemeur announced that Twhirl will include video within the next two weeks. He discussed the fact that video allows relationships to be formed around the world without actual presence - it brings people closer together.
Robert told of WalMart’s ability to buy fabric internationally over video conferencing the quality is so high.
Cohen tells of the savings that video conferencing brings - gas, time, environmental etc. People can work remotely easily - so long as the video integrates tightly with their existing workflow processes - people feel more comfortable giving feedback over video than "in the flesh". Veodia does all the hard work in the background and serves up one button for users to push - delivering up the best quality that the connection available can give.
Mowad says that Polycom is much more focused on real time video sharing - gives examples of tele-medicine and tele-education.
Questions from the floor…..
What are the coolest things the tools could have?
Someone who has video on 24hrs a day when she works remotely - a sense of intimacy when they’re not there
How do you create a technology that becomes so immersive that one feels that they’re "really there"
Video brings an experience as close as possible to real life
Video enables Seesmic to run an international development team with real time collaboration
How can video-conferencing work when their are larger teams?
Remote controlled monitors that move depending on who is talking!
There’s a threshold beyond which video conferencing just doesn’t work - 9 or 10 people perhaps?
There is a perception of presence - the host of offerings - audio, video, IM etc build up a feeling of intimacy that means that the group feel together - even if the camera is focusing on someone else at the time
Discussion ensued about the fact that going forward the ability to catalogue the audio from a video stream - allowing for searching and text string recognition.
All in all an interesting panel - I guess it’s all about context and preference - I’m a text guy and that’s my preference - others work in images.
I came across an interview over on GigaOm with teen entrepreneur Daniel Brusilovsky. Seems Daniel is the 15 year old founder and CEO of TeensInTech, a social media site for, not surprisingly given the name, teenagers. He’s got Loic Le’Muer and Robert Scoble on his board, and has picked up a plum role as evangeliser for Qik.
Check out the video below, I came away thinking that Daniel is a nice guy, but I was also a little uncomfortable - I get a bit of a sense that Daniel is being manipulated rather than helped by his apparent mentors. He spoke all the right start-up words, but his patter seemed a little scripted to me.
I think the concept of a teen entrepreneur is great, but I wonder if Robert and Loic would be anywhere near him if he weren’t a teen? I can’t help but think that TeensInTech is a concept not unlike iYomu (Diversity coverage here) - which never would have got backing from anyone actually in the know about Web 2.0.
Robert Scoble interviewed salesforce.com chairman and CEO Marc Benioff in a broad ranging discussion about the future of applications and platforms. It’s an interesting and insightful interview. Key takeouts and themes were;
It’s not about the browser, it’s about the network. With a move to mobile and other non PC devices, platforms that can serve device agnostic data will win
SFDC is now over $1bill revenue and most recent quarter showed 50% growth
Benioff lambasts the incumbent ISVs in particular, saying many times that they block innovation
This Monday a major announcement will be made regarding a Google/salesforce partnership in terms of platform sharing
In an interesting exchange, Scoble asks Benioff how one changes the thinking of people mired in Windows 2000 and the Word/Excel/Powerpoint world. Benioff uses the example of when he started at Oracle 20 years ago and CIOs were reluctant to use Oracle, wedded as the were to the DEC incumbent offerings Benioff gave this excellent quote;
In this industry we tend to overestimate what we can achieve in a year but underestimate what we can achieve in a decade
A great interview and an insight into the thinking of one of the earliest SaaS disrupters. Check out the full video here.
Robert Scoble follows 23000 people on Twitter, this means that he’s getting a new tweet every second or so. A presentation he gave yesterday to the Mediabistro Circus is certainly interesting viewing. He shows his desktop, replete with scrolling RSS feeds, Twhirl notifications and GTalk popups (read lots of detritus that is arguably necessary for a media show-pony but not for anyone who wants to actually get anything done).
Scoble waxes poetic on the world wide talk show, but then interestingly a few things happen;
Scoble admits his use of multiple screens with the “noise” in the periphery
Scoble turns off the “noise” if he needs to work (but I thought all this connectivity was a productivity booster!)
Look at the man! He’s not exactly an advert for the health benefits of being online 24*7
Other than these obvious observations, Scoble demos some interesting offerings all the while showing us why we (he) need to get out and smell the roses more. I’ve offered to take him out for a nice rural run next time he’s in NZ - I’ll keep you posted on whether he takes me up on the offer!
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