Is there a new technology race starting in the hotel industry? Three weeks after the Marriott, Cisco, and AT&T telepresence announcement comes this announcement by Starwood, Cisco, and Tata. Is this a case of an industry still suffering from reduced business travel and reduced conference bookings finding a new strategy? Telepresence is not going to make up the shortfall however; such a strategy could become a differentiator in attracting new business. It will be interesting to see how the hotel chains position telepresence and how they will package it with traditional products. Offering telepresence press events (see sample below) to conference organizers could be a starting point.
Intellor Group is providing webcasting services for Pittcon 2010 (www.pittcon.org) which is being held in Orlando, FL this year from February 28th – March 5th.
Pittcon is the world’s annual premier Conference and Exposition on laboratory science. It is organized by The Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy, a Pennsylvania not-for-profit educational corporation which is comprised of the Spectroscopy Society of Pittsburgh (SSP) and the Society for Analytical Chemists of Pittsburgh (SACP).
Pittcon attracts nearly 20,000 attendees from industry, academia and government from 90 countries worldwide and is managed by a committee of volunteers and a 10-person staff. Proceeds from Pittcon fund science education and outreach at all levels, kindergarten through adult.
The Pittsburgh Conference donates nearly a million dollars each year in the form of science equipment grants, research grants, scholarships and internships for students, awards to teachers and professors, and grants to public science centers, libraries and museums.
Many talks will be recording via Intellor’s Live Event Capture Service and posted to an attendee-only website. This is an awesome service for multi-track conference goers because they can catch all the talks that that they missed during the day by logging onto the site later that night in their hotel rooms or anytime after they get home. Overall, this drastically increases the number of talks available to attendees and extends the value of the coference tremendously. Way to go Pittcon!!!
Big storm heading to the Washington DC area got me thinking about how a big storm used to mean a day off. Now, big storms, the flu, sick kids… just mean a day home conducting meetings via my AT&T Connect meeting room. Not sure how this happened. Wonder if the Federal Government will start changing from “liberal leave policy” to a “virtual leave policy”? Seems to make sense?
I started the morning with what I thought would be a simple task – renew my Norton Anitvirus software that has been yelling at me for days that it will expire soon. Symantec provided me notifications that the credit card needed to be updated to process the renewal, what they failed to tell me is that it needed to be updated “weeks” before the renewal date as “automatic” renewal does not mean “immediate” renewal.
Thinking this will be a quick fix, I jump on a chat session with support to tell them that I have updated the credit card but the “automatic” renewal has not been processed. My assumption is that they will simply press a button and the renewal will be processed – ha!.
The customer service agent says, yes , we can renew that for you – great! He then asks if he can take over my computer? Huh? Spending most of my days jumping in and out of web conferencing sessions this is nothing new to me. However, I find it ironic that a company that is focused on protecting my computer is now requesting me to provide access to my computer? My response was “No” – after all, I simply want the product that is listed in my account with the updated billing information to be processed – you need access to my computer to do this?
What’s the message?
The message is that here is a case where web conferencing or more accurately, remote desk top access has become main stream. The desire to take control of my computer was the first option to correct my situation. The second part of the message is that remote desk top access was the solution to an internal systems problem. The Customer Service Rep could not renew my account from his end, so he wanted access to my computer to perform the action from my end. Without this option the customer support scenario becomes much more difficult.
The ironic message or question.
The customer service agent did not have the authority or access to my account to renew it, however, using remote desk top access, I could have given him the authority on my computer to perform the process/transaction. Question is; if the company does not trust the customer service agent with confidential information on their end to renew my account – should I be trusting the same customer service agent with my computer?
In the end, all of this was resolved the “old fashion” way – via a phone call.
Marriott Hotels with the support of AT&T and Cisco are launching a new service called GoThere Virtual Meetings (www.gotherevirtualmeetings.com). It was the name that first caugh my attention –”Go There”? Why would anyone name a “Virtual Meeting” service “Go There”? Already intrigued, I watched the video (see below) and realized that not only is the name appropriate, I often use the same words to describe the difference between web conferencing and video conferencing. When trying to communicate the difference I typically say “you need to go to the video conference location”. As demonstrated in this video, you “GO” to the Marriott Hotel to participate in the TelePresence session. If you are lucky enough (meaning you have money) to have TelePresence at your company, you still need to leave your desk and go to the video conference room. Where as, web conferencing is about attending from “where you are”. As web conferencing providers, including AT&T Connect, add mobile phone support you attend a web conference from “anywhere”.
FYI: I did find this video a good example of Cisco TelePresence.
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