Inside Cisco’s “Cinematic” Meetings: Eye-Level Presence, Less Friction
Cisco’s Distance Zero rethinks hybrid collaboration with meeting equity, AI at the edge, and cinematic framing that keeps every participant “at eye height”—plus live 3D object discussion with Apple Vision Pro.
SVP/GM Snorre Kjesbu explains how Cisco defines “Distance Zero”: everyone gets a true seat at the table—being seen, heard, and included in the room dynamics, whether they’re remote or on-site. Subtle but powerful touches—like equalizing participant size and eye level—remove hierarchy cues and improve equity.
He frames where hybrid work stands now: bring people together for creativity, mentoring, culture, and serendipity (yes, the coffee line matters), and let focused grind work happen anywhere. For offices to “earn the commute,” rooms must outperform home setups—for those in the room and those remote.
Technically, this is enabled by a decade of AI/ML at the edge (a long-running partnership with Nvidia), now combined with newer large-language-model capabilities. Cisco’s “cinematic” system behaves like an AI producer—understanding who’s speaking and how a conversation moves—while noise suppression can differentiate lawnmowers, dogs, and even prioritize a specific speaker’s voice. On accessibility, live translation, captions, and annotation lower barriers for varied accents and learning needs. IT and facilities teams also get AI “superpowers” for reliability and scale since collaboration is now mission-critical.
Kjesbu notes that these capabilities are largely available on existing deployments (backward compatible where possible, with cloud assist), and adoption is strong: features like cinematic framing are on in 100% of meetings where available, and LLM-powered summaries, actions, and translation are surging.
If this helped clarify the future of hybrid collaboration, like the video, leave a comment with your biggest meeting-equity challenge, and subscribe for more deep dives on accessible, human-centered workplace tech.
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