As more and more companies today start to talk about the potential of interactive tables we (not without pride) would like to share an article with you from 1999 from the german news magazine “DER SPIEGEL”. Shortly before the Cebit 1999 the cover introduces the new world of the internet but also our first InteracTable. If you read the article (sorry, only german) try to imagine 2012 instead of 1999. You will be amazed how up-to-date all of this still is today.
See the future of collaborative work at the IBM Headquarter in Ehningen
17. Oktober 2012
IBM Sametime & Web Conferencing Integration with Avaya, Cisco and foresee
18. – 19. Oktober 2012
IBM Collaboration Days with foresee
(by appointments only)
more information and registration: www.ibm.com/de/events/occ/
Frank Sonder, Managing Partner of foresee, will give a talk (22.09.12/10:40) at the d.confestival event in Potsdam, Germany and we show our InteracTable on the related exhibition.
Title: Designing the Future of Collaboration
While the computer has revolutionized individual work and is about to do the same to mobile computing – it forgot almost completely about collaborative work in meetings, conferences and worldwide connected teamwork with InteracTable and IBM Sametime.
by Frank Sonder
An article on forbes.com about the importance of social media for CEOs and their corporate business recalled a research project we did back from 2001 to 2003. From todays point of view the project called “Ambient Agoras – Dynamic information clouds in a hyprid world” was very much about social media and new ways of letting technology be part of our every days live and work. To that extend it holds a crucial role in reshaping corporate buildings – away from single work to promoting communication, serving collaboration and enabling sharing.
further readings: The Disappearing Computer by Dr. Dr. Norbert Streitz, Achilles Kameas, Irene Mavrommati (Eds.)
At CeBIT 2012 we were invited by IBM to exhibit at their booth. We showed our most recent and game changing project for a large german group.
The collaboration room supports the management when coordinating their worldwide divisions as well as distributed teams cooperating on projects around the globe.
Back in 1999, when we started, or today: the main focus is on USABILITY.
We created a very intuitive and easy to use interface and use the most advanced multitouch hardware as well as our own development kit for multitouch gestures. Last but not least our products InteracTable and ScreenMate provide the suitable work environment to get people involved and actively participating.
But this time there is an even bigger story to tell. And this is IT SECURITY.
The complete backend of our collaboration software works inside the intranet and is fully integrated into the collaboration software of IBM (Sametime).
today our friends from mediaturns Hamburg were shooting a video about our Collaboration Room. Thanks Mark and Markus and also to our coworking space modul57.
mediaturns@work
There is an interesting article in the german business magazine Wirtschaftswoche about collaboration and virtual teams. Just a quick summary of some interesting facts
according to 160 german DAX companies virtual collaboration will have a growing (64%) or at least important (36%) role for them in the future
according to cisco they saved 100 million US dollar a year for travel
microsoft reduced travel costs by 10% worldwide and in parallel increased the productivity of their staff by 28 min a day
53% of the management considers building of trust as the most important challenge but also knows about the limitations of virtual communication just with email or chat
“Team workplaces with fixed installed collaborative technologies will become standard for every second office worker meanwhile traditional conference rooms are only used by 25% yet”
Quelle Artikel: So funktioniert das Management per Smartphone von Cornelia Schmergal und Liane Borghardt in Wirtschaftswoche 24.02.2012 (direkter Link)
we couldn’t be prouder to be part of IBM’s CeBIT exhibition. The project we will showcase there directly connects to what we started up 12 years ago: the future of collaborative work. Within the last month we developed in strong cooperation with IBM a solution for a large and well known german corporate group. It will connect 3 InteracTable (horizontal) and a ScreenMate (vertical) via 3 locations in Germany, Russia and Spain. Document sharing, video and audio conferencing, multitouch and gesture recognition are the key words.
But the best part – it is 100% integrated in IBM’s software technology.
visit us from 06.-10.03.2012 in hall 2, A10
The following text gives a comprehensive insight in how we think about communication and collaboration. At the end you will find links further interesting readings from our research partners at the Fraunhofer Society:
Communication processes are as old as mankind itself. In stone-age cultures the elders and the wise met the rest of their tribe around the communal fire. Today such meetings take place as a necessary bridge between the individual and the community at fixed times and at a central location. They form the basis of a necessary ritual for creating a sense of community and preserving identity by defining and depicting social rules of behaviour as hierarchical and power structures. In this respect, the subject is an ”old” one, but does, however, gain new dimensions as a result of the rapid development of communication and information technology.
Communication within a community always needed specific locations and areas as we have remained ”instinctively territorial creatures” in terms of hereditary behaviour until today. The abstract meanings of words such as ”place” in the sense of belonging, of possessing and of a sense of security show how closely our thoughts and actions, our feelings and social links are related to concrete locations. The functions of communication processes and how they are reflected in space planning, have been subject to a constant process of development and differentiation over thousands of years.
When we speak of the ”age of communication” today we mean worldwide data networks and almost unlimited physical mobility, which lead to the exponential growth of knowledge and information worldwide.
The availability of information is therefore both the prerequisite and driving force of competitive advantages and technical progress. The phenomena of globalization and specialization are the direct result of the material and mental mobility of an information society, in which communication has become the decisive innovation factor.
The basics were described by Dr. Dr. Norbert Streitz
Roomware: Towards the next generation of human-computer interaction based on an integrated design of real and virtual worlds
another article in the IEEE Computer Society Magazine
Roomware: Computers Disappear and Interaction Evolves
Christan Müller Tomfelde cares about the non-interactive part of the InteracTable
Interactive Tabletops with Non-Interactive Rims
