Now we have another (practical) form of communication

Microsoft launched Kinect this week. It represents a new, practical and already available form of communication. It is part of what I have described as the Experiential Web.

Forget cave paintings, scrolls, books, letters, newspapers, telegraph, radio, phones television, the web and social media. They all require a mechanical interface. Now communication is possible just through movement.

Adopted and used by the PR industry, it can help the industry begin to achieve its full potential in this technology led era and should add a new and additional revenues stream.

I imagine that in two years there will be in excess of £250 million worth of PR fees connected with this single product alone and that it will grow the industry and significantly. I am not so sure that this will be the PR industry as we know it but it will definitely be PR and the first Kinect trained PR students will emerge into the market within a year.

Kinect's capability and application has a role in communicating with almost every organisational constituency.

No overalls, gloves, wands just a person going about daily activities can be involved in this form of communication.

How this is achieved has been talked about a lot already and it requires only a tiny imagination to see applications in almost every form of PR activity.

Mostly, Kinect is aimed at games and rather standard communication like conference calling but that need not deter the PR practitioner.

Just by having a constituent move in front of a sensor, the practitioner can now deliver a message, interact in real or virtual way and can engage directly. With its face recognition Kinect can deliver messages to people  based on no more than a photographic image (offering a whole new dimension for direct interaction with attendees at the corporate AGM, launch, political rally, press conference not to mention the retail outlet, sporting event etc).

To do all this the practitioner may want to partner with games developers like Scott Henson, at Rare who says:

You saw our big bold vision for Kinect when we rolled it out last year and now we’re going to enable that. It’s amazing to me how much we’re going to deliver to consumers at launch but we’re just scratching the surface of what we can do....

Kinect is not a game it is a new form of communication.