Geeky As He Wants To Be

I recently read an article in the Christian Science Monitor about a Canadian fellow who uses the concept of telepresence to work at one location while being physically quite distant. It's not as slick as Waldos, if you've read Heinlein; more like a video teleconference on wheels. Its a way for the fellow to continue to work at a location, and be seen as part of the team at that location.

That last phrase is key. Lots of people work at physically distant locations from other team members; usually those other team members are more-or-less in one place, and the others are at satellite locations -- sometimes as groups, sometimes from solo locations. What they tend to find is that people who work alone, or in small, remote groups, tend to be forgotten in the day to day affairs of the organization. Oh, yeah, we know about Bill working up in Pennsylvania; we see him on the IM system, we get his emails, we hear him on teleconferences. But when we have a group meeting, we don't always remember to tell him about it -- and when we do, listening over a telephone line is a poor second to being physically in the room where the meeting's being held. And when we're looking for someone to take on a project, try out a challenge, move up -- we remember the people we see.

This fellow's robot does that. He's not just a voice, but an actual face that you can look at while he's talking. And he's not limited to direct conversations on video links -- his avatar can cruise the halls and stop people for casual conversation. If people want to talk to him, they can call, email -- or stop the robot. He's virtually there.

Now, this sounds pretty nifty, but also pretty geeky. I can't honestly think of an environment where multiple people would need it. But I can foresee a sudden increase in interest about telepresence-enabling technology over the next few months and years -- directly in proportion to the costs of fuel - and this sort of thing could well be a start. Think, for example, of the efforts (somewhat successful, but you gotta believe) to run extensions of real-world businesses in virtual environments, such as Second Life.

Avatar, anyone?