Next week, as part of IMTC's Annual Meeting,  I am moderating a panel with the leaders of Telepresence and video communication market worldwide, including Cisco, Avaya, LifeSize Communication, Polycom, Radvision and more. Also, we will host standards organizations that lead the way in making video communication ubiquitous - IMTC (event hosts), UCIF and SIP Forum.
You can join the event via phone and video conferencing - all the details here. The event takes place on Wednesday, November 3, from 10:00 – 13:00 PST (Pacific).
If the future of video communication important for you - join us.

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• IMTC Experts Group Advances SIP Video Definitions to Facilitate Seamless Integration Into Broader Communications Platforms (eon.businesswire.com)
• IMTC Recognizes Technology & Industry Leaders (eon.businesswire.com)
• Polycom's CTO Says Openness Is Key (pcworld.com)
• Telepresence comes home, but it likely won't come cheap (news.cnet.com)

Steve Jobs is going to revolutionize the video telephony market. Here are 2 posts discussing how it would affect the market and what does it mean that it is based on open standards:
Thank You Mr. Jobs
The Technology Behind  FaceTime

These posts were published in IMTC's blog, an international consortium of visual communication companies,  and were written by me and Anatoli Levine, President of IMTC and Director of product management, Americas  at RADVISION.

2025- an invitation from Kfir Pravda on Vimeo.

2025 is a free vitrual conference about the future of your living room and cubicle.

For more info check 2025.imtc.org

(Shot on 7D)

Apple doesn't like Flash. We know that already. Steve Jobs recently called Adobe lazy, and we all know that iPhone and iPad doesn't support Flash. But the story is a bit more complex than that.

Apple's opposition to Adobe is linked to HTML 5 - an open standard that would enable developers to use open formats to deliver rich media experiences. As such, this format is a threat on Adobe. And as Apple Insider analyzed in a great post about Flash vs. Apple:

By not putting Flash on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, Apple is creating a significant installed base of affluent users who simply can't be reached via proprietary binaries like Flash and Silverlight. That has successfully shifted attention both to Apple's own App Store platform for mobile apps and to the open web, encouraging developers to embrace standards-based rich web apps and multimedia delivery based on open specifications.

Yesterday, I quoted this post on my Facebook profile, stating that Apple are promoting open web standards, by supporting HTML 5 over Flash. This created an interesting thread of responses, that you can see here.

I'd like to better explain why I still believe that Apple are supporting open standards in comparison to Adobe. HTML 5 is not propeatiery format. It is not owned by a single company. Also, Apple played a key role in creating H264 format - one of the key events in online videos in the recent years. As such they are clearly more supportive of open standards then Microsoft (especially if looking at the browser wars) or Adobe.

Now, it doesn't mean that Jobs help old ladies cross the street. Apple are supporting open standards from selfish reasons - they want to diminish Adobe's power, and especially keep it out of Apple's ecosystem. Also, they can support open standards, and still build a closed garden such as the app store.

You see, supporting open standards is not good, bad or anything else. It is, first and foremost, a business strategy.  But from some reason, some think that open is "good" while close is "bad".

Do you think that Skype is evil? No. But they have a proprietary  protocol. They chose this strtategy as it got them to the market faster then going the standards route.

For more about this topic, from Skype, Cisco, Jabber and Radvision, check out this panel that I had the honor to moderate couple of years ago as part of my role in IMTC. We discuss the value of standardization as business advantage in details:

Just my two cents. Also note that the views in this post are my views as an individual, and do not represent IMTC, a standardization organization, in any way, shape or form.

IMTC Forum, meeting place for experts in video communication and collaboration, is doing this year a virtual conference, as a part of its years long commitment to bring the best thought leaders and technology experts together.  The event, called 2025, Technology, Standards, Work, Life, will discuss the ways video technology and collaboration will change the way we work an live in the year 2025. We expect thought leaders from different industries to share their views on these amazing topic and help us all retool our business and life for the future.

We also decided to do our whole planning process as transparent as possible, empowering the community by sharing our thoughts , decisions, vendors that we've reviewed and  lessons we've learned.

But, as always, we need the technology to support this event. This is what we are looking for:

1. Ability to have up to 4 video streams (moderator + 3 speakers), with minimum video requirement of a webcam
2. Ability to show slides per presenter
3. Ability to mix video feeds  (meaning, one video player only, but the feed is switched between speakers' feeds)
4. Authenticated Chat section per session (including Facebook connect and Twitter API)
5. Display Official and hash tag Twitter stream in the sidebar
6. Ability to record all sessions and chats for re-runs and VOD access
7. Simple to use registration page for participants

Are we missing anything? Let us know. Also, we don't necessarily need one product with all features - mesh-ups are acceptable.

As a non profit organization we have a shoestring budget - but the event will expose technologies to the right audience - and what is better than seeing a technology in action?

Beyond these requirements, we will ask each vendor to write a short post about the value of virtual events, the way that technology is changing business, and their view on the needs of the industry. We will add our own commentary on each post, as well as write about our decision making process regarding this solution.

Interested? Email us at kfir AT pravdam DOT com with 2025 in the subject line.
Please send us your proposals by September 15th.

How can you create an engaging, interactive, virtual conference, that will keep people interested, even though they are hundreds of miles away? This is the challenge that we at IMTC is facing this year, while planning its annual event.

IMTC's Annual event is a meeting point of industry experts in the fields of video communication and interoperability. This year we decided to do a full day conference virtually, using available technologies. We are doing it because of three reasons:

1. This is the conference of the future: Though nothing can replace a handshake, virtual conferences are appealing from economic and efficiency perspective

2. This is what we do: IMTC is all about collaboration, unified communication, and content delivery. Virtual conference is best way to practice what we preach. We also would like to support our members by letting them showcase their technology in real life scenarios, and not only in booths and exhibitions.

3. This is the right thing in the current economic climate: With companies cutting their travel budgets, we should, as an industry organization, enable as many people possible to be a part of the experience. Virtual conference is a great solution for those who can't travel, but still interested in the content or participants of the event. Also, in times when companies invest a lot in order to reduce their carbon footprint, virtual events are the way to go to help our planet a bit.

So what is the biggest challenge?

For me, the biggest challenge is not technical, but the experience :How can we prevent the conference from turning into a string of webinars or a list of audio presentations?How can we encourage people in the "audience" to interact with speakers and with each other?What should be the role of social platforms in the event?And how to make an extraordinary event, that pushes the boundaries of virtual conferences, with a shoe string budget?

Luckily, I am a part of a great team that is trying to make this project a reality, including Anatoli Levine from Radvision, Andrea Basso from AT&T, Shantanu Sarkar from Cisco, and many other volunteers.

Want to be a part of the effort to create the conference of the future? have a relevant technology? Consider this as an open call for the industry and drop me an email at kfir AT Pravdam DOT com

Published originally at IMTC's Blog

Joe Burton, CTO of unified communication group in Cisco, gave a keynote in IMTC Forum in San Francisco.

In an industry overview, Joe said they are tracing 300 (!) changes that will affect UC industry. The industry is concerned with economical situation, industry consolidation, etc.

In the presentation the following trends were reviewed:

- Technology is all about business - No one cares about installing HD video. People care how HD video solve the issues in the business itself

- The value chain is empowered - Joe has his own Mac and iPhone even though they are not purchased nor approved by Cisco IT. Partners are involved in the systems the company is using. Customers want a hook into the corporate system, and the business leaders require IT transformation while driving down costs.

- In web 2.0 corporate every user has its own applications. Joe has a Netvibes-like portal where different applications, including sales figures, IM, Twitter and news. The enterprise UC will be a widgetized world. Video can be a part of this world.

- Enterprise Telephony is $10B market, while UC is $30B - a whole new Cisco.

- Consumers drive the IT - not the other way around. It changes the way that products are sold. Also video becomes core - as it is a part of the basic system

- Video is the fuel for internet traffic increase - by 2013 video will overtake P2P in traffic.

- Video as is is $50B business in 2013.

- The workspace is getting more and more complicated with the amount of applications each user can do create for his/her own benefit.

The main takeaways:

There are no shrink wrapped applications - everything is tailor made.

There are no single media application

There is no single application deployment

The need for plug and play multimedia standards never been higher

The presentation:
Joe Burton's Presentation at IMTC Forum

The fact the Joe is using Twitter and other social applications, shows how advanced Cisco is when it comes to understanding the link between social media and communication. I am looking forward to see how these applications will affect Cisco's product line.

Image via Wikipedia

I am flying tonight to IMTC Forum, taking place in San Francisco on the 12th and 13th of November. More info about the event can be found here. I will moderate three panels, one about click to call and business processes, one about social networks and the enterprise, and one about online collaboration and the enterprise.

See you all soon!

K

REMINDER: IMTC is having its annual event on the 12th and 13th of November. The event is focused on unified communication and the way it supports business processes in the enterprise, as well as the blurring lines between corporate systems and online applications.

We have great speakers at the event - starting with Joe Burton, CTO of unified communication group in Cisco, Matt Collier, SVP of LifeSize communications, Ty Wang, Senior director of Product Marketing at Oracle, Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho, Hakon Dahla, CTO of Tandberg, and Anatoli Levine, Director of Product Management, US, at Radvision, and IMTC President. The event covers both cutting edge technologies (such as the world beyond H264, Scalable video coding today, and conformance methodologies) as well as business issues such as unified communication beyond click to call, social networks and the enterprise, Multimedia and tele-health and many more.

It is an exciting event, taking place in an exciting location - St. Regis hotel in San Francisco. I am moderating several panels in the first day, and will be there through the event.

If you are in this business, or want to meet in San Francisco, you should come and say Hi. Here is the agenda, and you can register here.

IMTC is having its annual event on the 12th and 13th of November. The event is focused on unified communication and the way it supports business processes in the enterprise, as well as the blurring lines between corporate systems and online applications.

We have great speakers at the event - starting with Joe Burton, CTO of unified communication group in Cisco, Matt Collier, SVP of LifeSize communications, Ty Wang, Senior director of Product Marketing at Oracle, Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho, Hakon Dahla, CTO of Tandberg, and Anatoli Levine, Director of Product Management, US, at Radvision, and IMTC President. The event covers both cutting edge technologies (such as the world beyond H264, Scalable video coding today, and conformance methodologies) as well as business issues such as unified communication beyond click to call, social networks and the enterprise, Multimedia and tele-health and many more.

It is an exciting event, taking place in an exciting location - St. Regis hotel in San Francisco. I am moderating several panels in the first day, and will be there through the event.

If you are in this business, or want to meet in San Francisco, you should come and say Hi. Here is the agenda, and you can register here.