Mark Trachtenberg, CEO Teliris at Telepresence World

The following article was written by John Serrao of Human Productivity Lab. Technology Evangelist and Human Productivity Lab are co-covering the happenings at Telepresence World.
TW2007 Speech: Mark Trachtenberg, CEO Teliris

One of the first speeches at Telepresence World 2007 Day 1 was Mark Trachtenberg, CEO of Teliris. Mark concentrated his speech on the fundamentals of how a new technology, like telepresence, becomes widely accepted into society.

Trachtenberg laid out technological development on a spectrum consisting of 3 distinct phases: Invention, Experimentation, and Standardization. He thinks we are currently somewhere near the experimentation phase, although his speech clouded this point. He suggested that the evolution of telepresence into the standardization phase will only take place with a killer app of telepresence. His vision of the killer app is an invisible telepresence system, meaning neither party would have any idea the system was even operating.

The speech went through the dynamics of how the printing press was developed and how each stage relates to the modern world of telepresence. With this lead, he concluded that the printing press’ complexity and size were whittled down, through the experimentation phase, into what he termed an, ‘inert technology’ – referring back to the original ‘invisible’ telepresence idea. Precise eye gaze, multipoint capability and line of sight were all part of this invisible package of the future.

He concluded by saying telepresence still has a ways to go but that will be overcome with advances in technology that help telepresence systems seamlessly integrate into their surroundings.

John’s Analysis:

In so many words, it appeared that Mark was making an indirect call for interoperable codec that would unite the industry, providing for greatly utility of all telepresence systems. Coupled with advances in technology, the network of these rooms would overcome the barriers of conferencing most people are all too familiar with. While this overtone was ever present in the speech, it was still never fully realized. The speech highlighted where the telepresence industry is at without breaking any new ground. It was a good high-level speech for the early time slot in the conference that it occupied. I was hoping for a little more meat but hopefully we can get a clearer vision of Teliris when we speak with Mark in the coming days.

via [technology evangelist]