Shared Visions has officially re-launched as Meeting.ie and we’re absolutely delighted to unveil the new, re-branded Meeting.ie website. Why the change? We’re on a mission to streamline and simplify our services, to clearly explain the value of what we have to offer, and to make our best-of-breed product solutions easy to choose and to buy.
We hope the Meeting.ie brand clearly conveys what we do – help small and large companies to meet smarter – and that our new site give you an excellent user experience. If you have any feedback or issues, please feel free to contact us – we’d love to hear your views.
Aoiffee and Steve paired up this week for the Microsoft Live Meeting task on Ireland’s The Apprentice, and we’re delighted to see our favourite Polycom CX5000 featured as the 360-degree video and voice hardware of choice. We’re covering the pros and cons of this odd looking device, but if you want to see it in action, there’s a preview clip from The Apprentice:
The Polycom CX5000 (or as it was formerly known, the Microsoft Office Roundtable Camera) is a video conferencing device that produces a 360 panoramic view of the room. It also has a automatic speaker selection that brings the current speaker right up in the main video screen when they talk. This feature works well if the meeting participants behave and don’t make unnecessary noise.
The CX5000 achieves its 360 view by combining the feed of five web cameras fitted into the dome of the CX5000 into one 360 panoramic view.
I have been watching this product’s development now since July 2006. The earliest video of the Roundtable is from 12 July 2006 and features Dwight Schrute from the comedy televisions series The Office US:
It took a further 18 months for the Roundtable to be finally released, and in November 2007 at an Intercall Partner event in London I got my hands on one to see it in action with Microsoft Live Meeting 2007. After that, the camera disappeared for over a year and was nearly impossible to purchase anywhere in Europe until it was announced that Polycom has licensed the right to distribute RoundTable, effective April 13, 2009. It was renamed into the Polycom CX5000 Unified Conference Station and will be sold though the Polycom partner network.
The CX5000 is used in conjunction with Office Live Meeting service, or as part of Office Communications Server 2007 and combines content and a panoramic 360-degree view of the entire meeting room plus the separate view of the active speaker for a unique and engaging voice and video experience.
I had several opportunities to test the equipment for myself and think it is a good piece of kit that produces an OK visual image. It comes a t a price of around €3650 where you get the camera, the in-built audio conferencing unit and two extension microphones. Unfortunately it now is completely locked into the Polycom and Microsoft solutions so a cross usage with other browser based Video Conferencing solutions is not possible. Normally a company that is into a serious OCS deployment and rollout with a technical team onsite will bring the CX5000 it into the scenario and deploy across various rooms and locations.
However regardless of the long time it took to emerge fully on the market, I congratulate Microsoft and now Polycom to the novel and functional design that produces an alternative, practical view of a video conferencing environment and believe that we will be seeing many more of these devises on boardrooms and in meeting rooms around the world in the future.
Presentation and slide design is tricky. Creating slides that support the message you want to portray is the core idea. Slides should be engaging and keep the audience’s attention but not distract them from what you say. What slides should not be is full of text and data that nobody can read and understand. We all have seen the “death by Power Point” approach and will probably not get away from this. However I see a change in this as people improve and change their presentation design.
Garr Reynolds fromPresentation Zen gives an excellent overview of effective slide design in What is Good PowerPoint Design? His blog on all issues related to professional presentation design is an excellent source. Garr talks about context, not to think in terms of right or wrong, but rather in terms of what is appropriate or inappropriate for the content and objectives of that particular presentation. “Simple but not simplistic” is a key theme in good presentations. The best visuals are often the ones designed with an eye toward simplicity and within the context of the presentation.
I am still new or some might say only getting started in the social media space and learn every day how to improve. Particular relevent: content sharing, giving and helping can be tricky and sometimes I am not sure how to contribute.
Louis Grey explains in a post very well that it is important to think about these three pillars: Technology, Community, Relevancy. If a site is meeting those needs, it should succeed – or if it is falling short, it might fail. Good lesson to be learned!
Tips and tools for better online meetings, presentations and broadcast communications from Meeting.ie.
