The Quilt TelePresence Workshops
Following on to the success of its previous workshops. The Quilt TelePresence Working Group decided to host another workshop in October focusing on trends in the video conferencing for the research and education community. With the new technology and focus on interoperability in the video conference space, the working group found it difficult to narrow the topics for the workshop to fit into a single session. Rather than eliminate key topics, the decision was made to spread the program across two half day sessions instead. Forty six individuals spanning 15 states joined the two interactive sessions with a choice of joining either by video through sites connected through the R&E TelePresence Exchange or by WebEx.
The first of the two workshops focused on networking to support video. The program began with an excellent presentation by Ira Weinstein from Wainhouse Research providing workshop participants with a fast-paced and valuable overview of the current video marketplace. Other workshop topics included an informative presentation from a K-12 school district in Arizona on its use of specific collaborative suite integrations such as WebEx and Google Talk. Nick Ciesinski from the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater shared his experiences with interoperable point to point dialing plans. Another highlight of the event was a presentation from Tim Poe of MCNC on various marketplace options to consider to keep down the costs of managing video ports.
Our second workshop titled “Campus Delivery of Video” opened with a presentation from Mike Cardoza at Harvard University sharing his experience managing everyday campus requests for interoperable video sessions. Several examples of new ideas for immersive video conferencing in classrooms and collaborative spaces were shared from Indiana University, Eastern Central Board of Cooperative Education in BOCES ad the Utah Education Network. A full listing of the workshop agendas and presentations are available at: