FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Dr. Martha Russell, Associate Director
Media X at Stanford University, 650-723-1616
Martha.Russell@stanford.edu

STANFORD, California, February 20, 2008 - "The problems the team finds together," says Martin Fischer, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the Center for Integrated Facility Engineering at Stanford University, "the team fixes together." Recent studies reporting how people are organized in top multinational firms show that "75% of professionals work on distributed teams, 65% of them work on 3 to 5 teams, 20% have never met their boss face-to-face, and half of those don't expect to," reflects Chuck House, Executive Director of Media X at Stanford University. "Knowing how to inspire and manage geographically distributed work teams is critical to business success."

A geographical distance of 5500 miles separates the California regional development consultant from the construction engineer and the Minister of Education in Qatar, Saudi Arabia. A computerized tone sounds as the environmental systems engineer from Stanford University joins co-workers in the virtual meeting room. The avatars of this small team hover around a table that shows the meeting agenda. In front of them, an interactive three-panel display shows current and future images of the community, a dashboard of the ten most important sustainability indicators for the community development plan, and an interactive spread sheet that graphs the energy demands, water requirements, waste removal, population growth, projected school enrollment, job training, and project expenses will change as they change over the life cycle of the planned development.

In the charts showing waste removal and education, green bars turn to red midway in the graphs. "The schools won't be able to accommodate the 3rd and 4th graders of the new families needed to staff the new jobs created by year 5," says Minister of Education. "The trash and recycling services will overwhelmed in year 4 if they're not expanded beginning year 2," adds the environmental systems engineer. Using his avatar's virtual pointer, the city planner highlights a cell on the spreadsheet and changes the date of the new elementary school construction, then highlights another cell and changes expansion date for reclamation services, then re-runs the simulation. All bars in the chart turn green. The city planner saves a copy of the spreadsheet to his desktop, "This solution works but it has cost implications," he says. "I'll present the revised sheet at the Budget Council this afternoon."

"Without the ability to get everyone together virtually," reflects Martin Fischer, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and head of the Computer Integrated Facilities and Engineering Laboratory at Stanford, "it would have taken several weeks to detect the problem on a complex project like this - and another couple months to get everyone on the same page for a solution." "When team members meet in this virtual environment where they can talk, listen, point and see - in the presence of each other," says Renate Fruchter, Founder and Director of the Stanford Problem Based Learning Laboratory, "they're all looking at the same data; they're all hearing the same issues; they know they're the team that can find the problem as well as develop the solution. They get it done."

Remote decision making, virtual meeting rooms, data visualization, and interactive communications are important dynamics of business collaboration that are studied by Stanford researchers, with sponsorship from Media X, through its member companies. Sponsoring companies meet regularly with Stanford interdisciplinary research teams to review findings and discuss their meaning. And once a year, all members of the Media X community gather at Stanford to take measure and chart new research initiatives.

The 6th Media X Annual Meeting will take place March 3-4 in Arrillaga Hall at Stanford University on the theme, "Transformative Insights about Virtual Worlds, Collaboration and Participation in Mixed Realities." This year's meeting features new results from interdisciplinary teams catalyzed by Media X - describing the chain of effects across neuroscience, emotion and engagement; describing the importance of human-machine interfaces for energy-efficient buildings and cars; describing participation in mixed reality environments; describing best of class virtual collaboration processes and technologies in construction, education and medicine; and describing a novel approach to creating open source virtual worlds that includes automation and tracking capabilities. "Media X member companies interact with the Stanford research teams throughout the research projects," explains Martha Russell, Associate Director of Media X, "greatly enhancing the velocity and effectiveness of technology transfer."

Five outstanding keynote presentations that inspire the application of these transformative insights to sustainable energy, biotech and education punctuate the meeting. Veteran author and journalist, Michael S. Malone, will describe, for the first time to a business audience, the research for his new book, a next generation sequel to his hugely influential The Virtual Corporation. Educator, trainer and systems scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Program Office, Frank Niepold will describe how NOAA's vast longitudinal environmental data have been harnessed for public access and how youth are inventing new uses of these resources. Senior University Counsel and Director of Legal Services at Stanford University, Susan Stayn, will discuss legal issues and organizational innovations that are opening opportunities for collaboration across various stem cell research communities. Visionary critic and writer, Howard Rheingold, will offer a penetrating perspective on the brave new convergence of pop culture, cutting-edge technology, and social activism, describing how the real impact will come not from the technology itself but from how people use it, resist it, adapt to it, and ultimately use it to transform themselves, their communities, and their institutions. Renown futurist and Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Media X, Paul Saffo, will describe critical forces shaping the changes that will follow the electronics revolution.

Registration for the day and half meeting is open to Media X members - and non-members as well. http://mediax.stanford.edu/conf_08.html.

About Media X

Media X is a community of academic researchers and industry partners studying interactive communications and technology. Strategic corporate partners include DNP, Philips, Sun Microsystems, Time Warner, and The University of Edinburgh. Members of Media X also include BP, FX-PAL, Intel, Intuit, Konica Minolta, Learning.com, Motorola, NBC Universal, NCast, Phillips, Quindi, Qwaq, SAP, Sesame Workshop, Swivel Media, Tekes, Teknowledge, and Visa. For more information about Media X, see http://mediax.stanford.edu.

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