Commercial Meeting Solutions: Where we are and where we are headed

This paper describes products and technologies that enterprise customers can purchase and deploy to enhance the non-verbal and verbal human communications of employees during their meetings with remote participants. After descriptions of specific solutions, the authors focus on frequent bottlenecks that hinder natural interaction, and then outline some approaches being taken by researchers and manufacturers to address the issues. Three broad categories of end user products are available to enhance realtime, on-line human-human visual communications: ! hardware-intensive room/group video communication systems for bringing together groups of people in two or more locations. This large category includes telepresence systems at the high end, high definition room systems, standard group conference room systems, interactive white boards, and small video-conferencing appliances for meeting rooms and individual