Coordination meeting of European Transhumanist Associations in Teleplace

Following the opening meeting in Milan last November, a second coordination meeting of European Transhumanist Associations has taken place today in a Teleplace virtual workspace. Online 3D technologies and workspaces for videoconferencing and deeply interactive collaboration already permit productive e-meetings for distributed workgroups. Online meetings, which can be especially productive for pre-existing groups, are not (yet) a full replacement of physical meetings, but can be a very useful complement to physical meetings and permit saving money and time.

Agenda: VR meetings and seminars in Teleplace, Transvision 2010 conference (draft program and logo almost finalized), H+ UK 2010conference (very good progress, I look forward to attending), collaboration with various European research groups and projects, and an onlinetranshumanist art exhibition under development.

Besides the agenda, I was also interested in studying the first reactions of newcomers to Teleplace: all participants besides David Orban and myself had never been in a Teleplace before. All newcomers learned how to use the basic functions of Teleplace (moving, talking, streaming webcam video, adding and editing documents) in a few minutes, and one (Marc) set up a complex presentation without help. I think everyone had a very positive impression and could see the potential of Teleplace for professional online meetings and presentations.

Besides working group meetings, we are also planning a beta version of an ambitious e-learning initiative (much more at due time). We will start with monthly seminars in Teleplace, and the one-and-only Anders Sandberg has accepted to give the first lecture on advanced neurotechnology wizardry and mind-boggling future prospects.

I look forward to hosting other virtual meetings, and I wish to thank Teleplace for their support.

Teleplace Open House webinar, March 10 2010

Last night I attended a 3D Webinar – Teleplace Open House: a 30 minute walk-through of an exciting new technology that is revolutionizing the way people meet, train, and collaborate. Immersive 3D meeting environments will change the way you do business. Come learn about a revolutionary new technology that is currently being used by other Teleplace customers, including: Intel, British Petroleum, US Navy, US Air Force, Chevron, and more.

We distribute Teleplace in several European countries, and I am used to small (5-10 participants) workgroup meetings in Teleplace, where all participants can talk, stream their webcam video, share their desktop and edit documents. What I wanted to see yesterday was a Teleplace stress test with a larger crowd. I already knew Teleplace is a great application for remote enterprise and work-group collaboration, but the ability to handle larger audiences (50-100 participants) is important for e-learning applications. Thanks to the meeting management features of Teleplace, which permit one or more moderators taking full control of the meeting and railroading participants as appropriate (for example, muting all mics and unmuting those who raise their hand to ask a question), the webinar ran very smoothly and I am now confident that Teleplace is suitable for e-learning applications with large audiences.

I have taken a 10 minutes video to show parts of the presentation and to illustrate various examples of using Teleplace for interactive webinars and professional e-learning projects. The video is available on blip.tv andYoutube. The .mp4 file (10 minutes, 75 MB), is available for download here.