The road show in Brisbane included amongst others, representatives from Griffith University (hosts), The Queensland University of Technology, Southern Queensland University, The University of Queensland, Charles Darwin University, James Cook University, Southern Cross University, Australia National University, The Australian Catholic University, and a host of other universities and Govt bodies and a hospital.
James presented the results of the QLD survey that was conducted as part of the registration process. Many AARNet services were known with the highest awareness, adoption and use of all states, however this may have been due to a high % of the attendees that were AARNet shareholders. As was the case in NSW, a number of issues affecting adoption and use including issues surrounding technology and integration, costs and access to funding and resources (time, staff), the need for greater staff and user training.
Maggie presented an update on the National Video Conferencing Service and the soon to be released Quality Assurance program, whilst Jason talked briefly about Telepresence, High Def video and desktop video solutions.
Brett presented on work done in building, supporting and publishing live and on demand streaming content for a number of events that AARNet has supported this year and gave an insight to a soon to start Streaming Media group. Some live demos were performed.
Three keynote talks were held.
Dr. Richard Caladine
explored the changes taken place in personal communication video conferencing (PVCV) use and his prediction that devices will increase and not go away and that support for various devices under a unified communications concept is needed. A survey conducted earlier this year identified that support for PVCVs was mixed with many granted access of internet use (with warnings), to others that prescribed certain devices to manage services, or in 2 cases PVCVs were not allowed. Richard predicted that video communications traffic will grow in volume, unpredictability and be more latency intolerant. The Australian Community of Rich Media Expertise has recently issued a survey to the sector to find out more about video conferencing.
Len Goold of Cement Australia
explained how investments in video conferencing saved $3m in travel cost and helped in fostering better communications between two companies that merged in 2003. He explained how a combination of culture and adoption of technology change was needed and achieved by initiatives and user education and support, to build a business case that in the last 5 years has reduced their $5m travel budget by 30% based on an initial estimated investment of $0.5m.
Ashley Ward (ARCS)
explained that the new Australian Research Collaboration Service (ARCS) organisation to support researchers had been operating since mid year, he explained the EVO desktop video collaboration tool and how it was being used within ARCS and for its customers and he covered the ARCS/AARNet agreement that was in place to enable the service.
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Keynote 1 -
P2P RTC APPS within Australian R&E
, Dr Richard Caladine, University of Wollongong
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Keynote 2 - Video conferencing adoption and use case study - Len Goold,
Cement Australia
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Keynote 3 - EVO Update - Ashley Wright - ARCS
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Special thanks go to staff at Griffith University for hosting this final RTC Roadshow event for 2008