Page 73 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

52 � mAnAgIng the moBIle workForCe
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Presence
` Being There
` The impression or sense that something or someone is
close by

We walked into HP’s Halo Collaboration Meeting Room, which,
after all the high expectations, seemed just like a small meeting room
with six comfortable chairs lined up on one side of a curved wood
table. The difference, however, stared us in the face. On the other
side of the table three large screens lined the wall. Sitting above these
was a collaboration screen that, we would learn later, projects an im-
age so clear that engineers, designers, managers, and others, located
anyplace on the globe, in real time, can use it to see and work from
detailed, complex figures. Sitting life-sized in those screens, looking
us right in the eyes, was Bill Avey, WW Strategy and Marketing, HP
LaserJet and Enterprise Solutions, Hewlett-Packard.
As Bill explained Halo we noticed several things. When we
walked across the room the cameras followed us, just like our eyes
would follow a person in a normal meeting setting. Also, Bill told us,
unlike the opening to the old Brady Bunch TV show, where you see
nine videos of people who are unconnected in real time, with Halo
technology you get the feeling that the people in the virtual meet-
ing are right across the table. Just as in a traditional meeting, when
a person is speaking in a Halo Meeting Room all eyes appear to be
right on him. When the baton is tossed to another person, everyone
seems to face her as if she were right across the table—even though
she might be in Singapore. Halo Meeting Rooms even have the exact
same furniture and design in all of their locations, which reinforces
all participants’ feelings of being in the same room. Also, unlike the
audio delay you hear when news reporters are being interviewed from