July 2003


Next generation video conferencing to address the human factor

Next-generation video-conferencing and collaborative technologies will need to become more intuitive and people-friendly before they are adopted widely and reach their full potential, participants at a recent national workshop were told.

Co-hosted by ORION, York University, and CANARIE, the event was designed to help define funding and research objectives for the next Advanced Network Applications, Services and Technologies (ANAST) program under CANARIE’s CA*net 4 initiative.

Over 60 people from throughout the country participated in the York University workshop, some from distant locations in Ottawa, Calgary and Burnaby, B.C. For participants, the event was a rare opportunity to share and learn about other organizations’ experience with video conferencing and to establish contacts for future collaboration.

Although access grids, collaborative workspace environments and better ways of sharing and accessing data were all among the several topics addressed at the workshop, it was clear that for many people and organizations, video conferencing still represents a technology barrier and it is important to move the technology beyond the “talking heads” experience.

Part of the challenge is to make the experience more intuitive and responsive to the way humans normally interact when they are face-to-face and when they work together.

“The workshop will help us define the central support services and facilities that CA*net 4 should provide to enable more effective use of video conferencing and other collaborative technologies,” says Peter Marshall, CANARIE’s Director of Network Applications.

Ultimately, the workshop will lead to a series of recommendations on topics in the research and development of next generation video conferencing and network-based collaborative tools that CANARIE should fund as part of the CA*net 4 advanced applications and research program.

The funding timeframe will likely be from January 2004 through March 2007 during which from eight to 20 million dollars will be made available, depending on indications of interest through the workshop process and the number of funding requests.

Marshall, who is leading part of the funding and program definition process for CANARIE, anticipates that new program guidelines may be released as early as this fall.

For Phil Baker, President and CEO of ORANO, ORION’s advanced optical high-speed capability will help accelerate the use and adoption of advanced video conferencing and technology in Ontario.

“Users of the network will be in a much better position to develop solid proposals to access CA*net 4 and CANARIE funding,” he said. “There’s no reason why Ontario and Canada can’t be a world-leader in this field. Having a multi-gigabit optical infrastructure like ORION that reaches out to 21 cities throughout Ontario certainly gives the province a distinct advantage in expanding the use of these new technologies. For many organizations, the rewards can be enormous and ORION is keen on playing a leading role to make it happen,” he said.

Marshall expects to share a draft of the new program design and guidelines with workshop participants by the end of July and that the funding program will be announced in the fall.

The find out more about the discussions, and to view presentations and video of the May 23 seminar, visit the workshop web site at http://www.orion.on.ca/vcworkshop/index.htm.


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