Saturday, May 18, 2019

Where In the World Is David Keohane? "BNP Paribas rolls out hologram projection technology"

Mr. Keohane is a correspondent for the Financial Times formerly Mumbai, currently Paris.
It was from his Twitter feed we got the Pamela Anderson tweet at the bottom of last night's "FT Alphaville: Now With More Pamela Anderson":
The Keohane tweet looks legit, short, punchy, slightly bemused. I think it is Mr. K. tweeting.
On the other hand, after disappearing from the pages of the FT for a month we see ten stories since May 12 on his FT stream page. And oddly enough the first of these, "Nissan’s parable of shoddy governance" is actually bylined 'Leo Lewis in Tokyo' and although Mr. Keohane has become a prime source for the Renault end of the Ghosn débâcle he also covers the big French banks.
And it is very unlike him to pass on the opportunity to report on holographic French bankers.
So what's up? Is Mr. Keohane back or not?

Here's the press release, May 17:

BNP Paribas rolls out world premiere teleportation meetings with Magic Leap & Mimesys
  • BNP Paribas is unveiling the teleportation meeting as it is convinced that immersive technologies (Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality or Mixed Reality) offer a unique experience for clients
  • This innovation enables the remodeling of interactions between people, whether employees or customers, in different locations. It also reduces their environmental impact and invents a new customer journey as well as new working methods
BNP Paribas, through three of its business lines - Real Estate, Corporate and Institutional Banking, and Wealth Management – is launching the possibility to hold teleportation meetings in five locations: Hong Kong, Dubai, London, Frankfurt and Paris. Each business will be equipped with Magic Leap Ones, a lightweight, wearable spatial computer, to conduct collaborative meetings remotely.

In collaboration with Magic Leap, the pioneer of spatial computing technologies, and Mimesys, a French and Belgian startup that develops leading spatial co-presence platform, BNP Paribas Real Estate will implement this innovative solution which was tested over a one-year period.

As a first step, the technology will allow various types of clients of the bank, particularly those of Corporate and Institutional Banking and Wealth Management, to be offered real-estate investment opportunities via a hologram with the BNP Paribas Real Estate teams. For example, a client in Hong Kong or Dubai could be in contact, via a teleportation meeting, with an expert consultant in London, Paris or Frankfurt and interact with virtual objects. The marketing of real estate anywhere in Europe will thus be facilitated by being both faster and more cost-effective, and the environmental impact of travelling will be limited....
...MORE

There is supposedly a video to go with the p.r. but I didn't see it on the press release or at L’Atelier BNP Paribas.
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