There were grey skies and rain delays at the Rogers Cup in
Toronto when Olympic champion Andy Murray pulled out of the match that advanced
Ontario native Milos Raonic to the quarter finals. A steady drizzle seemed to spread
across the 600 miles northeast to Montreal, where Quebec’s Aleksandra Wozniak
had her first victory against former world champion Jelena Jankovic. But it was
more than similar weather and Canadian tennis
triumphs that connected the two cities that day. For the second year in a row,
Tennis Canada utilized Cisco TelePresence technology to provide fans, athletes
and media with a video experience so authentic it seemed as though you were in
two cities at once.
IT in Canada saw firsthand how TelePresence was being used at
the Rexall Centre in Toronto. Fans gathered in a large red tent where they
could take turns passing the microphone around to talk tennis face-to-face with
South African player, Chanelle Scheepers, who sat in front of a camera in
Montreal. In a separate building just steps away, Raonic joined a media
conference room where members of the press who were attending the Montreal
tournament could ask questions through the TelePresence video technology. The
same method of communication was used in reverse about an hour later, when Toronto
media representatives were invited to (virtually) join Wozniak’s post-match
interview.
Cisco’s general manager of collaboration, Ian Gallagher, discussed
the company’s video conferencing solution with IT in Canada. “Video is a part
of everything we do these days,” Gallagher said. “As you hopefully saw today,
it’s a very natural way of communicating. A lot more of the information we
hear, we retain better when we see it as well. So we are using it for corporate
communications, training purposes, or recording meetings for people who [were
absent] as information has a lot more impact when people can visualize it.”
