Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson needed to view what seven film crews were shooting. His solution: push the envelope on videoconferencing technology. In the pitch-black night of the New Zealand winter, Duncan Nimmo, information technology manager of 3Foot6 Ltd., and his two-man crew hoisted heavy equipment—including spools of military-grade fiber-optic cable, a battery pack, wireless computer modem and an eight-foot-high antenna—up Mount Ruapehu in Tongariro National Park. They had followed worn goat tracks up the slope, and were high in the clouds. A snowstorm threatened to blow them off the mountain. [More]