I work for a large company, based in Detroit, in their
Lansing office. While most of what I do, can be done in Lansing, quite often I
am in meetings and on work groups that revolve around the Detroit location.
After all, there are 6000 employees in the D and about 200 in Lansing. So,
although our laptops are equipped with web cams, we rarely use them in our
meetings. Often we are utilizing web-ex capabilities and sharing ones desk top
to view whatever the topics are on someones screen.
I read an article this afternoon, about a company on the forefront
of utilizing avatars in meetings. How cool is that? Phillip Rosendale, founder
of Second Life and High Fidelity is introducing the oculus rift for an entirely
new virtual reality experience. It uses a 3D camera and body sensing technology
to fully immerse into a virtual world. The cool part of this story on CNBC was
the display Rosendale did at the Exponential Finance Conference where he was
actually interviewed as an avatar he dubbed "The Wall Street version of
Phillip". Rosendale's avatar did everything he did; smile, wink, wave,
while completely interacting with the interviewer.
Although my company is probably far from using any type of
this technology, I think it is pretty amazing that we have come so far. I
wouldn't mind displaying myself as an avatar - and it would put faces to the
characters I work with every day!
