[Hannah Mellow has been an intern at RADVISION's marketing department for the past 4 months, and has helped us with our blog posts, along with the various tasks she did here.
She has written a short tale of her experiences with visual communications during that time, and I am more than glad to publish it here]

As my four months working as a marketing intern here at RADVISION are coming to an end, I was asked for my opinion (which is by no means an expert opinion) about my own experiences and user interactions with visual communications here at RADVISION.

Prior to the internship at RADVISION my only real technological experience was using general Microsoft packages as part of my studies and Skype to talk with my friends – I would say that I have never been, or ever will be, a tech whiz. In fact, I would even go as far as defining myself as technologically challenged.

My first user experience of visual communications was with the office desktop. I got a phone call from a colleague and was surprised to see both her and myself talking on my desktop screen. Once I got over the initial embarrassment, I realized how great the technology was: when I saw her walking around the office, I knew exactly who she was – she was not just a voice but a real person.

I have also tried out SCOPIA Desktop, which is a bit like a cooler version of skype (especially if you choose to use it with friends and family). Not only can you video-chat with your friends, but you can also share presentations and draw all over them (I haven’t needed to use this but it was really fun to experiment with). And the best part of it all was… it’s really not that complicated. Once it’s on your desktop it’s as easy as using Skype, but with these much cooler and more professional features.

At RADVISION there is a demo room with two desks, three cameras, two endpoints and two VC240 screens. This demo room is used to showcase RADVISION’s solution to potential customers. But this is no mockup – I have spent quite a bit of time “in” this room, and this has been my main experience of visual communications. How it works (I think) is that someone somewhere dials my desktop phone and invites me to the demo conference. Then my desk is instantly connected to the conference – wherever the inviter may be. On the screen in front of me I usually saw myself, Meira which sits next to me and other RADVISION meeting rooms (both in Israel and around the world). The display and layout of these video feeds vary each time that I am there – sometimes I can only see myself and other times I can’t see myself at all. I am sure there is a remote on my desk to control all this, but don’t ask me how. It just works for me, which is great for anyone as technically challenged as me.

The XT1000, showing various meeting rooms in RADVISION, on display at InfoComm 2010

For Infocomm 2010 in Las Vegas I got to demo the XT1000 in the CEO’s room. I got to sit on a huge desk in a plush room – I felt like Dr Evil in Austin Powers. On one 60″ screen I could see myself, and on the other I could see the conference. From this nice desk in Israel I was speaking to business leaders from all over the world in Las Vegas. I even met some people from RADVISION’s American office. Again it was so easy – all I had to do was sit on the desk and press a button to mute/unmute the microphone. The rest just happened.

Overall, my experience using visual communications at RADVISION has been a straightforward one. I have been able to experience some of the top products on the market with no effort on my part. This has been made even easier with RADVISION’s killer remote control, which acts as both the desktop phone to dial in to the conference and as a remote to control it, as does the innovative SCOPIA Mobile app, which unfortunately I did not have the opportunity to use myself.

I look forward to hearing about more innovative, easy-to-use, RADVISION products in the future. Hopefully you all will be able to use them too.