My Telepresence Experience

I returned to Boston from HIMSS to spend the day with my daughter on her 16th birthday. We had a great day cooking, hiking, and enjoying a fabulous Japanese meal as a family. However, I was also in Chicago for 2 hours, speaking with the press about the Stimulus Bill, Interoperability, and Decision Support.

The press gathered at the Cisco booth on the floor of HIMSS and I welcomed them to my basement via Telepresence. We chatted for an hour with full life-sized 1080p real time video. Truly, there was no difference from sitting in a room together, other than the fact that my basement had a bubbling fish tank and 2 rabbits running around.

My Telepresence experience was different from traditional video conferencing in that it did not feel like a video conference. All the other units I've used in the past have had a small grainy picture with tinny sound, often displaying picture within a picture. Telepresence is just high definition video and audio with the feeling that you are in room with the other participants, not on a video conference.

All the eye contact, gestures, and common courtesy you'd use in an in person meeting are natural in Telepresence. I changed my body position, my eye focus and my voice direction as I spoke to various participants.

The technology worked perfectly over my home Verizon FIOS 20 megabit connection.

I really enjoyed using the technology to connect with HIMSS while being in Boston with my daughter. At 4am I'm heading back to HIMSS for a day of meetings with many stakeholders. I'm working on becoming 100% virtual, but our culture is not quite ready for that!