Metadata For companies and users, Panel at the IMTC 2025 Event:
Moderator – Andrea Basso, AT&T.
Alberto Messina, RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana)
Paolo Dettori, IBM
David Gibbon, AT&T

Watch It here (Playlist) or see the following parts:

Part A

Part B

Part C

Part D

Part E

IMTC promotes industry standards and interoperability to help shape the future of multimedia telecommunications technology.
Inside IMTC panel explain a bit about IMTC itself and it’s value to the telecom industy.

How can four people from different parts of the world meet for a coffee?

What makes people from different background, religion,  social status and abilities connect to each other? How can 750 million disable people can potentially maintain active social life despite of their disabilities?

The answer is Virtual worlds, and in the IMTC 2025 case – Integration of a virtual world with video conferencing. Two of our panelists appeared with their avatar while the other two used video streams. The result – a mixed virtual and real life video-conference.

One of the most successful virtual worlds  is Second Life – some see it as a game – but it doesn’t contain any specific goals or traditional game-play mechanics.
For others  it is what it is – a Virtual world, full of residents, ideas, groups, societies and an economy.
SL contains over 18 million accounts and have it’s own currency, where in-game dollars can be converted to USD.
SL economy sheer size is huge – it’s estimated at 567 million USD – 25% of the whole virtual goods industry in the US.
“Virtual” life never seemed so real.

SL and other virtual communities attract businesses in the same way Social Networks attracted and still attracts businesses.
With new platforms there are new ways for businesses interact with their clients and there are new potential clients to interact with – What would be the role of virtual worlds in 2025?

Dana Blankenhorn recently wrote an article at the ZDNet blog about Telepresence and Interoperability.

The Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) will allow video-conferencing systems to connect to Cisco’s telepresence systems and will be released as open source under Apache license.

Dana also mentioned the IMTC 2025 conference, and the interoperability group that will take place at the SuperOP! 2010 event, which indeed was delayed due the recent volcano eruptions – proving again the value in telepresence technology.

CALL FOR SPEAKERS (Extended For 2 More Weeks)

The IMTC Forum, a meeting place for experts in video communication and collaboration, is conducting a virtual conference, April 7-8 2010.  This is the first of its kind event, taking place in the browser near you.  The theme of the event is 2025 -Technology, Standards, Work, Life.  We’ll discuss the ways online technologies will impact our lives and careers in the future.

We’re looking for additional speakers who wish to share their knowledge and professional standpoint of what our technological future will be.  If you’re interested, please send an email to kfir@pravdam.com.

Discussion Topics Include:

• HTML 5 – Standard Web Video Delivery & Its Effect on the Value Chain
• Online Collaboration Status
• Metadata and What it Means for Media Companies & Users
• HD Voice
• Democratization of Video Conferencing & Telepresence in the Living Room
• Social TV
• Triple Play in the Living Room – What’s Next?
• Gaming 2025 – Beyond Virtual Reality

Speaking at the Event:

• Marie-Jose Montpetit, Senior Scientist, MIT
• Alicia Abella, Executive Director, AT&T Labs – Research
• Alex Eleftheriadis, CTO & Co-founder Vidyo, University of Athens, Greece
• Joe Hildebrandt, Principal Engineer, Collaboration Software Group – HTML 5, Cisco Systems
• Guido Jouret, VP/CTO, Emerging Technologies Group, Cisco Systems
• Eyal Magen, Chief Strategy Officer & Co-Founder, Gigya