Subject: movies vs chat logs

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 18:39:11 -0800

due to lightening struck tower, i was unable to be at the atlanta
meeting.  i really needed to know what happened in a number of
sessions in which i have critical interest.

the jabber logs were useless, at best "s/he is talking about X now"
with no idea of what was said, how it was justified, what the
reactions were, ...  note that i am a jabber user, run a jabber
server, ...  so it is not anti-jabber prejudice.  it just seemed
not to work in this particular context for this particular use.
perhaps it kept folk with insufficient email amused during boring
times :-).

by happenstance, most of the sessions i cared about most were
recorded by the mbone team.  i downloaded the mpgs, and have
found them *very* useful.  it is like being there, but without
the opportunity to put my foot in my mouth.  i am not sure how
useful the stuff was in real-time broadcast.  but the recordings
sure are a real help.

randy

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From: George Michaelson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 13:03:06 +1000

I found the jabber logs helped me decide when to move between sessions, when
micro-timing of schedules wasn't apparent and I had to be in 'both' sessions.

I found sidebar conversations carried the subjective information you missed. I
don't think we can yet intuit the consensus of the room to put that into
jabber in the wide, one mans bozo is another mans guru and all that...

I think you are right to characterize the recordings as 'being there with
sanity checks' -The jabber stuff was a way I found I could meet two goals:

	1) let other people know whats going on in the room

	2) compile the data which the WG chair wanted as a log of the session
	   tending towards the official minutes

On the whole, I liked having the jabber even if the value is moot. Writing a
jabber log is very painful. RSI returns!

cheers

-george

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From: Marshall Rose <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 21:48:45 -0800

> perhaps it kept folk with insufficient email amused during boring

as someone who was in atlanta, the jabber conferencing allowed me to be in two
places at once, and gauge which room(s) i needed to be in...

were some logs more useful to you than others?  if so, what features of that
logging was helpful. since we've got another meeting coming up in a month, now
would be a good time for us to start giving advice to folks...

/mtr

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From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 22:33:58 -0800

> were some logs more useful to you than others?

yes.  but the difference between 5% useful and twice as good is not
very interesting.

i have used jabber in ietf meetings and similarcontexts.  it works
to coordinate stuff in real-time.  but that was not my application
this time.  i really was after the as much content of the meeting
as possible.  to do that well in jabber or whatever, one would have
to pay a court transcription person.  whereas, as someone already
pointed out, a cheap video camera does the job.

randy

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From: "Theodore Ts'o" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 09:47:12 -0500

> pointed out, a cheap video camera does the job.

On the other hand, it's much faster and convenient to scan (and
search) a text transcript compared to viewing a video feed.  It also
takes up less space to store.  It's extremely amusing to think of a
scribe as a compression algorithm, but that's basically what's going
on.  Unfortunately, as always, compression can sometimes be expensive.

In some cases we might be able to get cheap grad students.  Or perhaps
we could find people who would be willing to transcribe 2 or 3 wg
sessions that they aren't otherwise participating in exchange for a
deep discount on their registration fee?  There would need to be some
quality control (maybe the wg chair has to certify afterwards that the
transcript was an accurate record of the proceedings), but it would
help make much better minutes.

Of course, there are some downsides to having a non-participant scribe
or take minutes for a meeting.  Someone who is familiar with the
background, context, and (unfortunately, sometimes) jargon of a
working group can often take better minutes than an outsider.  On the
other hand, it is very hard to take good minutes and/or scribe while
participating in the discussion, and often the minutes will suffer for
those portions of the meeting where the minute-taker also wants to
join into the discussion.  (Or stand in line at the mike, etc.)

That being said, though, I think that if the scribe was comprehensive
enough, and the text was then immediately reviewed by the wg chairs
and other core participants in the meeting, while the discusions was
still fresh in their minds, the result might be a much *better* record
of what happened than the current system of taking minutes for the
meeting.

						- Ted

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From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 06:55:01 -0800

> search) a text transcript compared to viewing a video feed.  It
> also takes up less space to store.  It's extremely amusing to
> think of a scribe as a compression algorithm, but that's
> basically what's going on.  Unfortunately, as always, compression
> can sometimes be expensive.

in my application, it was the lossiness which bothered me.  and,
while making searching easy is wonderful, it is useless if the
content itself is not there.

once again, my use mode, which in no way claim is the only one of
interest, was to get as much of the content of the sessions as
possible.  the jabber logs contain 1-5% of the technical and social
content of the videos.

randy

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From: Scott W Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2003 10:50:27 -0500

It has potential, but not much more potential than if someone emailed a
transcript at the end of the meeting.

If you are interested in the meeting, but can't be there because you are
not on-site, video is still far better.  No transcript can possibly show
the chair's facial expression as a question is asked and answered.
Nuances are important in understanding how and why decisions are made.

If you are interested but can't be there because of a conflict, then you
*could* watch the chat in real time but then you are not participating
fully in either meeting.  The main benefit here imho is to know when a
particular subject is going to be discussed.  For that you might just
get someone to send a msg to your mobile.

Transcripts are better because they can be edited for clarity during low
points in the discussion.

Personally I admired the effort that went into making the chat work, but
got nothing out of it except to know when particular topics were being
discussed -- after the discussion had already started.

On the other hand, I'm all in favor of tools for realtime discussion in
between physical meetings.  I think it would be great to have per-WG
IETF virtual hangouts with shared whiteboards and more.  

..Scott