Peter Graf, the chief sustainability officer at software provider SAP, was sitting at an oval wooden table one day, finishing a meeting with a colleague, when he found he needed a pen to complete some paperwork. He started to ask whether he could borrow one, but then he stopped himself. His colleague—and the pen—were in fact 10,000 kilometers away.
Graf was sitting in a high-tech room, where three large high-definition screens, a sound system, cameras, and even matching lighting all add up to give the impression of sitting in the same room as remote users. Participants at one location sit at half of a meeting table; an identical, matching half appears in a similar room that might be across the globe. When a user appears on the screen, it looks as if everyone is sitting at the same table. The sound system can even make different speakers' voices come from different directions to better replicate what happens when everyone actually is in the same room. "It's a very different level of conversation," Graf says. "You can make eye contact."
To read the full, original article click on this link: Keeping the Personal Touch without Getting on a Plane - Technology Review
Author: Kristina Grifantini
