English to English translation

My guess is that it is a fancy term for what we would call teleconferencing. Conference participants are at various locations, and communicate via televised images, sort of like a speaker phone with pictures.

It's something that Cisco Systems came up with, and it's a trade name. Public TelePresence

It's a bunch of networked teleconference rooms around the world. They are set up so that participants seem to be sitting around the same table. Cisco's own descriptions are dreadful corporate-ese. "Users can ... participate in impactful special events."

The NY Times does a better job of describing it. Hotels Find Keeping Travelers at Home Can Be Good Business
>The telepresence suites are intended to make participants feel as if they are meeting face-to-face: when you walk into the room, there is half a conference table facing high-definition screens that project life-size images of people sitting in similar suites elsewhere in the world.
>To enhance the feeling of being in the same room, the other half of the table appears on screen, participants’ eyes are at the same level and the walls are even painted the same color.

Here's a whole set of pictures of TelePresence suites

To enhance the feeling of being in the same room, the other half of the table appears on screen, participants’ eyes are at the same level and the walls are even painted the same color.

Sounds a little creepy to me.

That picture by the NY Times looks pretty cool though.

And it's better than some of the alternatives: the other day I attended a four-person panel discussion where only two panelists were physically present -- a third was there by video link, and a fourth was there by audio link. We, the audience, could see three out of four participants and hear all four, but the people on the other side of the audio/video links were somewhat disconnected, and had trouble figuring out when to say something.

I had a rule for myself in my last job that if I cared about the outcome of a meeting, I would be physically present. (For the most part the alternative was audio only.) Teleconferencing was fine to hear what was going on, but not if you wanted to influence things at all.

I think it sounds a little creepy. Practical but creepy.

Then again, I rarely even use skype. Phone and video conferences are just annoying to me - perhaps that's more indicative of the people I work/conference with though.