Los Angeles (18 March, 2019 03:00 PDT) – Oblong Industries, Inc., maker of multi-stream meeting solutions and pioneer of interactive spatial computing environments, is pleased to announce today the public beta of Rumpus, a new visual collaboration application for purely virtual teams. Rumpus makes web conferencing both content and context rich. It provides simultaneous access to shared screens from meeting participants, and delivers a new layer of communication with shared cursors, annotation, and emojis for signaling sentiment. Rumpus leverages the insights the Oblong team gleaned over six years of work with its enterprise customers on Mezzanine, the company’s flagship product for expansive pixel-rich collaborative work in a room, between connected rooms, and for off-site collaborators.
According to Oblong CEO John Underkoffler, “Rumpus completes our portfolio of modern solutions for collaborative work. While Mezzanine already provides the ultimate content-first meeting experience for colleagues collaborating in one room or across multiple rooms, we recognize that team-based work also happens virtually. We created Rumpus specifically to energize such teams. Rumpus delivers Oblong’s core design values around amplification of human cognition and capability while folding the power of Mezzanine into a laptop’s available workspace. And (see our very first post to the Rumpus blog) it’s the necessary first step on the path to ubiquity for true collaboration.”
Oblong defines true collaboration in terms of empowerment for each meeting participant. The company believes that technology should seamlessly elevate conversation and understanding so that the collective intelligence of the team is amplified. When each collaborator can contribute equally, easily, and simultaneously, team purpose, spirit, and productivity all benefit. Plus it’s more fun!
Rumpus for virtual teams builds upon a particular insight gleaned from Mezzanine usage. In aggregated opt-in data from Mezzanine customers, Oblong has noted that 62% of the time when users are sharing in Mezzanine, they are sharing multiple forms of content. This means that most of the time, when given the opportunity to share content concurrently, people will. Rumpus is set to offer remote workers the same opportunity to make multiple streams of visual material easily and concurrently accessible. Rumpus also leverages gesture (pointing and movement via cursors) to focus attention, provide emphasis, and communicate specificity. And to further encourage expression and participation Rumpus offers emojis, the language of the social web, to help remoters feel more connected and engaged.
“The way people communicate and collaborate is evolving,” says industry analyst Ira M. Weinstein of Recon Research. “Traditionally, a collaboration session involved a group of people in the same location viewing a single piece of content. An advanced session allowed remote participants to see the same content item. Today, however, many organizations are looking for a more dynamic and agile experience that allows multiple people to contribute content simultaneously from various devices and locations. Rumpus helps address these next-gen expectations.”
Oblong invites remote workers and those who work with them to participate in the public beta of Rumpus and start making it the go-to place to collaborate. Visit rumpus.co to see if you’re ready to Rumpus. Mac platforms are supported, with coming Windows support slated for Q2. Learn more at rumpus.co.
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About Oblong Industries
Oblong Industries’ innovative technologies change the way people work, create, and communicate. With roots in more than two decades of research at the MIT Media Lab, Oblong's flagship product Mezzanine™ is the technology platform that defines the next era of computing: multi-user, multi-screen, multi-device, and multi-location interaction for dynamic and immersive visual collaboration. This focus continues with the debut of Rumpus™ for purely virtual teams. Oblong is headquartered in Los Angeles and supplies Mezzanine systems to Fortune 500 enterprise customers and reseller partners. Learn more at www.oblong.com, and connect via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.