This week at Mobile World Congress, we’ve seen HTC and Samsung launch their hottest flagship smartphones for 2015. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make the trip to Barcelona, Spain, but that didn’t stop me from having a virtual presence at the show.
The internet allows me to stream audio and video, Google Hangouts and Microsoft’s Skype technology let me take calls with partners and executives, and telepresence technologies, like the BeamPro and Beam+, bring me virtually to MWC so I can take face-to-face meetings.
While similar in scope to video conferencing solutions, telepresence makes technology more personal and engaging. This means I can work from home with a telepresence robot in the office and follow my colleagues around as they move between conference rooms, rather than requiring my in-office attendees to be tethered to a laptop or re-dial into a video call when they transition between different meeting spaces.