News
DENMARK – World’s first cyborg participant at FRESH14
A human participant was ‘present’ through a robot at the FRESH conference and, at the same time, she could stay home with her little baby. She could watch the presentations, drive from one meeting room to another and even participate in discussions.
During coffee breaks, she could talk to other participants and visit the stands of all other innovating companies. She was even be present at the Abbit Meeting Support stand. Abbit Meetings Support is the sponsor of the project.
From her iPad at home in Belgium she could control the robot in Copenhagen. The iPad in the robot showed her face and returned video of the congress. 
This experiment was one of many innovations that ‘The FRESH conference‘ introduced for meetings and conferences. Congress innovation is the objective of FRESH, which was launched by Belgian Maarten Vanneste, to improve conferences and seminars and make presentations more fun and effective. The FRESH conference had about 200 on-site participants from 22 countries and as many free, on-ine participants from countries like Mexico and South Africa to Canada and Korea.
This was the first time ever a remote participant was ‘walking around’ among regular participants during an entire conference via a Double robot. This sort of participation is extremely interesting as ‘Present People’ was the main theme of FRESH14.
Based on this the delegates will discuss the power of meetings and maximizing human interaction in meetings. Cyborg participation certainly adds a new perspective to the discussion and it would be interesting to see if groups of robots is a part of the future conference design.
(www.visitdenmark.com)