August 08 Issue - Employee Monthly Magazine

Stretching the bounds of communication

Production value key for videoconferencing specialist

Roger Salles of Computing, Telecommunications, and Networking chats with coworker Diane Hansen in the state-of-the-art videoconferencing room he designed to help Lab staff connect with collaborators and colleagues all over the world. Photo by Dixon Wolf

Surging energy prices and shrinking budgets have tightened purse strings for domestic and international travel. But the need to connect with collaborators across the globe is greater than ever, and standing by to help are videoconferencing experts like Roger Salles in Computing, Telecommunications, and Networking Division.

Since he joined the CTN team in 2004, Salles has worked to make videoconferencing as seamless as possible for anyone at the Laboratory who needs to make use of this free service. He and his colleagues develop solutions like desktop videoconferencing to connect sign language interpreters with their clients at the Lab. And Salles engineered a state-of-the-art videoconferencing room, boasting an "immersive" atmosphere with three wall-sized, wrap-around screens. These innovations make Los Alamos a beacon of communication technology.

"We probably have more multipoint conferencing capacity than all of the other DOE sites," Salles said. Other labs often leverage the Los Alamos team's expertise and infrastructure for their own conferencing needs, he added.

Drawing on prior experience developing distance-learning tools at Northern New Mexico College in Española, Salles has focused on trying to transcend the technology and make videoconferences as much like face-to-face meetings as possible.

"To me, it's a show we put on," he said, and "production quality" is paramount. Several months of detailed planning went into the room he designed, down to the angle of the lights and cameras to avoid casting any shadows, the soundproofed walls, and the paint that reflects projected images the way a theater screen does.

Inevitably with technology, things do go wrong, and when they do, CTN staff members "jump into high gear," Salles said. "We rarely experience any outages that the customer can notice." That's a feat, given that between 10 and 20 videoconferences are conducted each week. "We don't know how to say 'no,'" he added. "If it wasn't such a cohesive team, we wouldn't get so much done."

And it's clear Salles doesn't mind supporting an ever-growing client base. His eyes light up when he talks about the myriad connections he's forged between the "smart people" at the Lab and their international cohorts. "It's fascinating to think, 'we have a videoconference with Moscow tomorrow morning.' "

—John C. Cannon