Bringing People Together

Dr. Peter Parnes

Associate Professor

Media Technology

Luleå University of Technology

CWE’06
-

Brussels 2006
-
05
-
11

Bringing People Together

Dr. Peter Parnes

•
Associate Professor

Media Technology

Luleå University of Technology


•
Founder and Chief Scientist

Marratech AB


•
Interests:

•
CWE/CE, human communications

•
Applied research

•
Lego, cycling



Do you travel too much?


Do you stress between meetings


and trips?


Do you spend a lot of time


in airports?


Do you carry a lot of stuff with you?




Do you wish you could work
from anywhere?


Distributed Workforce

•
People are distributed in several ‘dimensions’

•
Geographically

•
Different work places
–

offices

•
Live in different cities

•
Home vs. Office

•
Travel

•
Time zones


•
Communication is a big part of our daily work!


•
80% of all our meetings are spontaneous meetings


Type of communication

•
Asynchronous


•
Document management

•
Instant Messaging (off
-
line),
forums

•
Whiteboard

•
Supports work over time zones


•
Synchronous


•
Real
-
time rich communication

•
Audio, video, chat,
whiteboard,

web
-
sharing, application
sharing etc.

•
Recording

•
On
-
line messaging (on
-
line)

Examples

•
Academia
–

Luleå Univ. of Technology

•
Offices: Luleå, Skellefteå

•
Travel: Airports, other offices

•
Home


•
Industry
–

Marratech

•
Offices: Luleå, Stockholm, UK, Denmark,
France, Italy, USA

•
Plus resellers around the globe

•
Travel

•
Home

Smart people live everywhere!


Utilize them!


An integrated Europe!

E
-
meetings

E
-
meetings

•
Real
-
time group communications

•
Rich communications

•
Audio, video, chat, whiteboard,

co
-
browsing, application sharing,
private communication

•
Usage types

1.
Meetings

2.
Lectures

3.
E
-
corridor

E
-
corridor

Marratech

•
Result from EU
-
project MATES

(95
-
97)

•
Spin
-
off from “my” research group 1998

•
IST
-
Winner 2001

Are e
-
meetings the same as
physical meetings?


Better than being there?!


•
Natural synchronous communication

•
Spontaneous communication

•
Less travel

•
Work “anywhere”

•
Partial participation

•
Instant minutes

•
Feeling of presence

•
Group feeling


Vision? Reality!

Step forward…

•
E
-
corridor

•
Today: room centered

•
Tomorrow: user centered


•
The web browser is the main tool for
information gathering


Integrate the e
-
corridor into

the web
-
browser: Thelma!

Thelma

•
Better
spontaneous
real
-
time group support
via the net

+ Standard web technology

+ Ajax / Web 2.0

+ Conferencing

= Thelma

•
Allow for web conferencing where place is
defined by the web

•
Allow web designers to choose which rich
media to use!

Examples

•
Meeting people in real life:

•
At the printer, water cooler, coffee machine

•
Meeting people online:

•
Reviewing company presentations

•
Reviewing software code online

•
Reviewing sales documents online

•
Reviewing pictures online

•
Meeting people by interest!

•
Allow employees to cooperate more easily!

•
Primarily targeted for supporting smaller groups

Thelma and Technology

•
Integrate industry standards

•
SIP

•
H323

•
Mix of Thelma and “heavy” clients


•
Simple firewall traversal

•
Secure


Freedom and Productivity!

Anytime

Anywhere

From any device


Freedom and Productivity!

•
Move from time based work to result based
work!

•
Allow people to work from where ever they
like when ever they like!

•
Allow them to use any type of device!

•
Many work hours does not mean high
productivity!

•
Usually the opposite!


Freedom increases productivity!

Always Best Communication


Always Best Communication

•
Users want to communicate with each
other

•
Any place

•
Any time

•
Any device

•
How can we utilize wireless networks in
supporting ABC?

Simple Scenario


•
Session and device mobility

•
A user is late for an online meeting

•
The system knows this from the user’s
calendar

•
The system automatically dials the
user’s mobile phone

•
Audio participation

Step 2

•
The user reaches her office

•
This is noted by location awareness

•
The system automatically joins the
online meeting and ask the user where
she wants the audio

•
In the mobile, PC audio or desktop
phone?

•
User selects desktop phone on the
PC screen and the call is transferred
from the mobile.

Conclusions

•
Allowing people to work from anywhere!

•
Smart people live all over the world!

•
Allowing people to work when they want!

•
Freedom under responsibility!

•
Support spontaneous interaction!

•
Real
-
time communication everywhere!


Bringing people together!

Challenges

•
How can we better support a distributed
work force?

•
How can we enhance the “better than
being there” vision?

•
How can we integrate a distributed
work force thinking into existing
organizations?

Questions? Comments?

Dr. Peter Parnes

Associate Professor

Peter.Parnes@ltu.se

+46 70 6614567


http://media.csee.ltu.se/

tech

media