Take a virtual tour of our videoconference centre
What is video conferencing?
Why use video conferencing?
What are the facilities?
Where can I connect to?
Our experience in video conferencing
British Council Romania has launched its Video Conference Centre in Bucharest on Friday 5 December 2003, joining in this way our global network of over 30 countries. We can now offer the service in our offices in Cluj and Iasi, too.
This new facility opens up new ways of communication with partners all over the world. The videoconference technology brings people face-to-face in real time with sound and image from remote locations. The state-of-the-art platform we have implemented in our Bucharest office can link up to up to 10 sites simultaneously.
Encourages communication: you can communicate more regularly with people in other districts or countries, which would usually be costly or impossible if you had to travel
Saves space: you can video conference with many more people than would fit into a single meeting room because each party will be using their own facilities
Saves time: video conference communication and meetings are often much shorter in total as no travel is involved. A meeting that may take you away from work for four hours (due to travel) may take only one or two hours using a video conference
Saves money: it can lower your expenses as there is no need for all the costs involved with travelling, such as meals and tickets
Generates ideas: a telephone call or e-mail is not always the best way to communicate with another person. Interactive meetings can help to generate ideas, and enable people to read and react to others' sensitivities
Encourages collaboration: video conferencing allows for collaboration by document sharing. Many people in different areas can work on the same project and make contributions
Shares information: many institutions can receive the same broadcast simultaneously, and thus a much greater level of participation can be gained. For example, a lecture being broadcast to students at many different educational institutions
The video-conference suite can accommodate a maximum of 30 people in a theatre style seating arrangement. It can also be set out for much smaller groups or single users in an informal set-up;
The suite, located on the ground floor, features a large 43-inch plasma screen display, a Polycom VS4000 video-conferencing unit, a main digital camera, a smart interactive whiteboard and the facility to share computer presentations live in a video-conference. Our staff will be on hand to help you use all of these.
Anywhere in the world that has compatible video-conference facilities
Over 30 countries of British Council offices around the world now have video-conference suites, making it easy for you to link up with contacts and peers in other countries;
Many education institutions and public and private sector bodies around the world have their own video-conference facilities
A variety of education projects, - ranging from English language, human rights, arts, multimedia and business. Our successful pilot programmes so far include: Contemporary Writing seminar with University of Bangor from Wales, Improving Management in Universities conference with Cluj, Timisoara and Swansea, World AIDS Day Celebration with USA (Washington and New York), Moscow, Belgrade and Sofia or Contemporary Writing with Birmingham University meeting David Lodge. A full list is available here.
For more about the British Council global videconference network you may also like to read our InfoBrit article (PDF - Adobe Portable Document Format, 159 Kb) about the new partnership opportunities created by the new service.
For further information please contact us at videoconference@britishcouncil.ro.
| 
