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.

Thoughts on Remote Presence and the Texai

First of all - I wanted to thank Nate Westheimer and Brandon Diamond for allowing me to present at the NY Tech Meetup last week. To say it was a sudden surprise is an understatement since the original plan was to show a video of the Texai in action, rather than a live demonstration. For your info, the Texai is described at the Willow Garage website and will have some announcements in the near future. For initial discussions, feel free to watch the montage of the Texai.
For clarification sake, when you see me piloting the Texai, I am dialing in from my apartment in New York City to the office in Menlo Park, CA. When Dallas is dialing in to the office, he is dialing in from Seymour, Indiana.