All in a days work

One of my disruptors as a home worker is the cats, who in the afternoon, feel the need to be close to me. I was contemplating re-arranging my laptop setup this afternoon to allow the Molly the cat to sleep more peacefully. But in taking the photo below Molly the cat has now relocated to the comfort of the window sill (she will be closer to the sun there!!)

 

Roundtable

I have spent the past few days setting up and then holding conference calls with both the MS Office RoundTable Video Camera\Phone device and the Logitech Web Cam I own.  I have been very impressed with the ease in setting up the MS Office RoundTable  device. It pretty much does what it says on the tin. This is providing the back end infrastructure is able to support it, especially the network.

One of the big selling points of the MS Office RoundTable  is the 360 degree camera, which enables the camera to be placed in the centre of a meeting room table in the same way as a conference phone traditionally would. When somebody speaks (the loudest I hasten to add) the small screen will show that person speaking to other video attendees. It will do this for all video attendees regardless where they are located. This means that network bandwidth needs to be good for multiple attendees within a room and outside of that room. Too much movement in the room where the device is can cause the picture to disappear and then reappear which is a very off putting experience to the end user.

Being the first device that Microsoft have delivered with regards to Video Conferencing I do like it, to make it truly effective you need at least one more piece of equipement e.g. LCD Screen or a projector, so for me that removes the adhoc meeting purpose. From my perspective, I have colleagues who work up north and often get together, with this device I could “join” them in person without travelling a 500 mile round trip. By placing this device on the table I could at least see the people and there reactions which would make for a better meeting experience for myself. However I could do this with a room based video suite e.g. LifeSize for not much additional cost, but in this scenario I would still need the web conferencing tool, my laptop etc. I think to truly understand the value of this piece of equipement the team I work with need to use it in its real environment for a period of time. Once I have done this I will add my thoughts again.

One thing I haven’t mentioned is the audio on this device. This is something I think is exceptional, in comparison to a spider phone in the middle of the desk the audio quality and sound detection is of superior quality.

As a first attempt at Video Conferencing this device is very good, as with all advances in technologies and strategic partnerships this device will only improve with time.

One of the things I haven’t commented on is the design of this device. Yes it does remind me of something from “War of the Worlds” and to sum up the impression of somebody who does work in this industry when he walked in to the office his first words were “What the **** is that thing?” If you haven’t seem it yet go take a look at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/uc/images/image034.jpg

 

 

Unified Communications Expo

I attended the above conference at London Olympia this week and was impressed at the wide variety of vendors in attendance. There was the opportunity to attend business briefings ranging from UC and Messaging to VoIP for Business. One theme that stuck out to me during the course of this event was the need of our traditional vendors to start working in a more consistent manor than before. What may be an industry standard for telephony may be implemented and configured differently depending on which vendor solution you choose. This theme continued from the Voice Con conference in Orlando when both IBM and MS said they would work together to produce a solution to allow there products for UC to connect. The results of this will be apparent at Voice Con, San Francisco later this year.

The other theme that was apparent was the need to change how we work together to actually realise the investment that is being made in UC. If you work from home or have plans to in the future take a look at http://www.telework.org.uk and http://www.henleymc.ac.uk/henleyres03.nsf/pages/fwf , both sites offer some interesting information about how to better work from home. This is an area that needs further investigation as many customers start to implement there strategies for collaboration and workers start to make that transition from being permanently office based to being home workers.

For me I don’t think I would consider working for a company that did not allow some level of home working.

The Journey Begins (again)

Once again I am embarking on the blog journey. I have created my account, selected my theme added the widgets I wish to use and now it is upto me to ensure I keep this blog upto date.. This is where I struggle I have many thoughts as with everybody however do I really want these to be public? What thoughts should be public and what thoughts are best left un-written? I’m not going to make this a work orientated blog, or a home only blog as this would be too restrictive for me. Life, Home and Work merge for me.