On October 13th, 2008, NC State and Cisco unveiled the Cisco TelePresence video conferencing facility at a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Engineering Building II on Centennial Campus. The gift continues the longstanding research relationship between Cisco and NC State University. For details on the donation and unveiling, please read NC State University Breaks New Ground in Virtual Research Collaboration.
What is Telepresence?
Cisco TelePresence is a virtual meeting solution that breaks down the barriers of distance by creating a lifelike virtual meeting experience where participants feel as though they are sitting in the same room though they may be thousands of miles apart.
Cisco TelePresence delivers real-time, face-to-face interactions between people and places in their work and personal lives using advanced visual, audio, and collaboration technologies. These technologies transmit life-size, high-definition images and spatial discrete audio. The Cisco TelePresence University Connection enables university researchers to increase the frequency of "in-person" collaboration with colleagues at other universities, helping speed new developments and improve ongoing research collaboration.
Who can use the Telepresence?
All NC State faculty and staff are welcome to reserve the unit. While the unit has been donated to encourage research, there are a number of other potential uses -- student recruiting by corporations or academic units on other campuses; discussions between administrative units (ECE Director of Graduate Studies at Purdue talking to his counterpart here); etc. Currently, we do not allow undergraduate or graduate students (this includes TAs and RAs) to reserve the unit.
The NC State Telepresence unit is located within 2025 Engineering Building II on Centennial Campus.
Who can I connect to?
Currently, NC State may connect to any Cisco Telepresence units on the Cisco Exchange, the R&E Telepresence Exchange, the AT&T Exchange, the BT Global Video Exchange, Tata Communications network, Orange Exchange, and the Verizon Business network. More connections are being made every year.
NC State's Global Telepresence Directory
Developed as an effort to identify the larger community users, the NC State Telepresence Directory welcomes all Telepresence owners -- including educational, governmental, and corporate organizations -- to register their units with the hopes of encouraging more collaboration: http://www.wolftech.ncsu.edu/telepresence/directory/
There are no fees or costs involved with listing your unit in the directory. Everyone owning a Telepresence unit can register by clicking the Add a Telepresence Unit button on the top left of the Google Map. Please note that in addition to the basic search options, we also provide advanced search filters, and detailed information on each unit can be found by either clicking on the unit's "pointer" in the Google Map, or by selecting the unit in the result listings below the map.