Remote Presence - after the novelty, effective presence happens.

Today's articles (both video and print) in the NYTimes presented a number of perspectives on remote presence. In the main article, Markoff does a great overview of the different plays within the remote presence space. As you can see in the video that accompanies it, the use of our remote presence system (RPS) at Mozilla demonstrates just one of a number of effective uses of an RPS.

In the Pogue and Bilton video as well as the Bilton post, however, the story of remote presence effectiveness seems lost while the novelty of the RPS roaming the halls is made primary - which loses the intent behind remote presence.

Framing the RPS in a different way

Imagine if you were a 7" tall individual, starting a job at a new office. Imagine the looks that people might given you as you appeared in the conference rooms, cafeteria or around the corner. Without an initial introduction, the surprise by coworkers is not at all surprising. Now, imagine if you suddenly walked around the corner and came face-to-face with this:

You too may have a strange reaction to a moving screen with someone's face on it.