Brad Feld

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Holographic Video Conferencing is Here

May 30, 2008
Category Technology

I’ve been bouncing around the world of video conferencing for a while.  The guys at Raindance – a company I was on the board of from 1997 – 2002 – knew this stuff cold (and what worked / didn’t work) as they were previously the founders of LinkVTC (one of the first video conferencing bridge service companies.)  One of the applications of the stuff Oblong (one of our new investments) is doing applies to video conferencing, and the little cameras on top of my computers occasionally get used.

While video conferencing is "ok" (and definitely 10x better today and at least 100x cheaper than it was a decade ago) it still sucks.  My reaction to the demo of Cisco’s On-State TelePresence Holographic Video Conferencing system was "bitching."  It’s pretty amazing to see it, even via online video. There are definitely some hacky aspects to it (as my partner Ryan points out, there is some sort of transparent screen being used), but it’s still incredible.

Another reason for airlines to be scared.