Special Event – Telepresence @ ITP
One last reminder – we are meeting tomorrow at 4:30 in 406: Anyone
interest please drop by, rsvp appreciated but not necessary…
rob
Recently, a group of ITP staff/students, and then Shawn Van Every’s
Live Web Class, visited Cisco’s telepresence setup at their midtown
offices.
The technology is very impressive and offers a range of possibilities
that Cisco is willing to let us explore here at ITP along with at
least one other school: Central Saint Martins College of Art and
Design in London. CSM is involved in a formal research endeavor in
proof of concept for non-corporate uses of telepresence – intention is
truly transformative use of telepresence in how people from all walks
of life around the global communicate. Cisco has invited ITP to help
shape this research , which would include installing a unit at ITP and
working with CSM across the Atlantic to measure some of the ways this
could grow beyond the corporate.
Molly Tschang, the Director for International Programs and Internet
Business Solutions Group will be available this
Friday, November 21st at 4:30PM in Room 406
to review the opportunity. Please see her notes and bio below for
some additional context:
If you can attend this meeting please let me know by shooting me an
RSVP so we can gauge interest.
Thanks,
Rob
—–
From Molly Tschang:
For ITP students, this is an opportunity to push the envelope with
Telepresence (TP) in collaboration with Cisco, the Central Saint
Martins College of Art and Design in London, and likely 1-2 other
int’l universities. Cisco has to date focused on the “corporate/
enterprise” use of Telepresence, which is tranforming how businesses
“meet”. “Our Cafe” though is all about TP in public places, which is
an area the company is just starting to explore.
There are 16 CSM students working on the project as part of a course.
There are a number of ways which ITP students can engage and be part
of “co-producing”, in terms of how we conduct the research, who is
involved and what we actually endeavor to do with the TP interactions
across the globe:
1) Act as a sounding board for CSM students. We will involve a wide
demographic of people in NYC, and students who are familiar with the
city can help to identify the target group of users and help to
conduct the research – some of which is in person, and some with the
actual system. It’s critical that we engage a broad cross-section of
people.
2) Provide input into “what” activities we do over TP. The research
will cover a range of “walk in” traffic as well as specific structured
activities, for example, discussion forums on specific topics,
listening to music, playing music together (any performance art),
viewing art, poetry reading, debates, sharing meals, perhaps even
cooking… ITP students would be an extension of the CSM team
3) Innovate on how the technology is physically set-up and other
devices which TP could interact with — this is about exploring what’s
possible.
4) We will likely have a number of projects that result from the proof
of concept. So beyond what’s possible we want to understand how
projects can be feasible and help to shape new applications for TP.
Also – please include a “save the date” for our 1st research review,
next Wed, Nov 26, 1-3p ET at Cisco offices.
Molly Tschang
Director, International Programs, Public Sector Practice
Internet Business Solutions Group, Cisco
Molly Tschang is director of International Programs in Cisco’s
Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG). Tschang works at the
intersection of public, private, and NGO sectors on strategic
engagements with international financial and development institutions
such as the World Bank, the United Nations, and USAID. Her focus is
on community-driven approaches to “inclusive growth”—economic
development and social inclusion—of the poor, and on building bottom-
up momentum for information and communications technology to enable
scalable and sustainable development.
In 2007-08, as a Cisco Leadership Fellow, she served as executive
director of the NGO NetHope and in 2004 a member of Save the
Children’s Empowering Women and Girls Delegation to rural Ethiopia and
Uganda. Tschang has also held senior positions in Cisco’s engineering
and corporate Business Development groups, where she led the global
team that integrated 50+ acquisitions into the company’s operations
and was instrumental in ensuring Cisco’s culture endured through rapid
change. .
ITP | Rob Ryan
Technical Operations Manager | Technical Producer