Subject: [vmeet] Stockholm

From: John Leslie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 01:53:08 -0400

IETF75 is upon us!

   I at least am committed to remote participation for IETF75: I have
set aside the usual meeting hours, and will follow remote audio, jabber,
and perhaps some Webex from my (Eastern Time Zone) office.

   I know there was a commitment of some Webex during IETF75 by Cisco:
last I heard it was intended to have "at least one room" enabled for
"instant-on" Webex. (I have not heard anything about "which" room...)

   IESG has pretty much shifted to Webex for their telechats. It makes
it considerably easier to follow who's saying what, and the display of
the current agenda item (such as ballot status) helps direct attention
to the issue at hand.

   There is, alas, more effort spent in chasing echo problems; and there
may be more problems of dropping off the call (though the IP audio seems
rock solid, it suffers multi-second delay, so most folks use dial-in).

   I think it would be good to document remote-participation experiences
at IETF75. What do others think?

--
John Leslie <[email-masked]>

---

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 02:02:30 -0400

Only Dispatch and V6Ops have remote presenters that are going to use 
WebEx.  We hope to make more use of this capability in the future, 
but the needed technical information to connect to the meeting room 
system was not available to us before we got on site.  So, we are 
only going to focus on the two sessions that need to support remote presenters.

Russ

At 01:53 AM 7/27/2009, John Leslie wrote:
>_______________________________________________
>NOTE WELL: This list operates according to
>http://mipassoc.org/dkim/ietf-list-rules.html.
>https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/vmeet

---

From: John Leslie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 02:18:17 -0400

Russ Housley <[email-masked]> wrote:
> WebEx.

   DISPATCH runs today 1740-1940: if I knew which presentation was to be
remote, I'd try to follow it...

   I guess you mean v6OPS (Tuesday 1300-1810) which is also in "Large
Stage"...

> We hope to make more use of this capability in the future, but the
> needed technical information to connect to the meeting room system was
> not available to us before we got on site.

   What else is new? (Actually, organization _seems_ better than average
so far -- but of course remote audio hasn't had the acid test yet...)

> So, we are only going to focus on the two sessions that need to support
> remote presenters.

   Fair enough!

---

From: Alexa Morris <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Jul 2009 23:23:35 -0700

Information on how to participate in both dispatch and v6ops will be  
circulated soon, we are just trying to finalize minor details.

Alexa

>> So, we are only going to focus on the two sessions that need to  

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---

From: John Leslie <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 03:29:08 -0400

John Leslie <[email-masked]> wrote:
> at IETF75...

   The remote audio (so far) is a pretty total bust. Muzak was coming
through pretty nicely until session start time; since then muzak alternated
with silence for a while, I got hopelessly unusable audio for "Large
Theatre" for a while, and now am getting nothing (not even silence).

   :^(

   (Jabber is working well, though...)

---

From: "Scott Lawrence" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 10:28:18 -0400

> only going to focus on the two sessions that need to support remote presenters.

I was one of those remote presenters (the DISPATCH session).  I decided
to cancel my presentation rather than attempt it remotely.

This was only in part due to the difficulties in being remote, but they
were a factor: in particular, the total lack of information on how
remote participation would work, what I would need at my end, and the
fact that WebEx won't work from my normal Linux work environment.  I was
not able to find any information at all (despite repeated requests) on
how I could test anything in advance.

There were other contributing factors - I'm not blaming my decision to
cancel on the poor support for remote presentation, but it was very
poor.

---

From: Marc Manthey <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 16:38:38 +0200

> cancel on the poor support for remote presentation, but it was very

i am on the list for several month and i did not recieve any  
information at all.

regards

Marc

P.S. we will hopefully present a " webex/cisco  killer " during this  
year

--  
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Opinions expressed may not even be mine by the time you read them, and  
certainly don't reflect those of any other entity (legal or otherwise).

Please note that according to the German law on data retention,  
information on every electronic information exchange with me is  
retained for a period of six months.

---

From: "Wes Beebee (wbeebee)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 10:39:35 -0400

I'm presenting remotely in v6ops tomorrow.  Hopefully, these problems
will be worked out by the time I need to present.

- Wes 

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf
Of Scott Lawrence
Sent: Monday, July 27, 2009 10:28 AM
To: Russ Housley
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [vmeet] Stockholm

On Mon, 2009-07-27 at 02:02 -0400, Russ Housley wrote:

> WebEx.  We hope to make more use of this capability in the future, but

> the needed technical information to connect to the meeting room system

> was not available to us before we got on site.  So, we are only going 
> to focus on the two sessions that need to support remote presenters.

---

From: Carolin Latze <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:46:31 +0200

> will be worked out by the time I need to present.
I will follow that group only to see how it works from this side and I 
am pretty much interested in your experience afterwards. Since I won't 
be able to travel to Japan in November I will try to use all those 
remote participation tools/ ideas/ ... then :)

Carolin

---

From: Carolin Latze <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:13:51 +0200

> will be worked out by the time I need to present.
Seems to work pretty good. What is your impression on the remote side?

Carolin

---

From: "Wes Beebee (wbeebee)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:48:31 -0400

It seemed like just a normal phone call on my end today in the WebEx
session.  

Yesterday, I had used Skype to Iljitsch's PC and I encountered audio
distortion and call-drop problems with the Homegate BOF - and found that
I had to resort to listening to the recording afterwards to understand
what was going on.  Thanks for posting the audio!

However, I had no problem with WebEx today from my side.  I set up my
Cisco camera so that I could broadcast video during my presentation.
The buttons for forward and backward movement of the slides were a
little small, but with some practice, I was able to go to the next slide
very easily.  Most importantly, WebEx has the capability to record
sessions (video, audio, slides, etc) for playback later.  I hope those
who set up the session utilized this feature and will post the
recording.

>From what I understand, people remotely heard a faint echo when I talked
- due to the sound being fed back into the microphones - but I didn't
hear any echos on my side, so I must have had echo cancellation when it
came back to me.  Also, even though I'm in Boxborough, MA and the other
side was Stockholm, I didn't notice much of a delay in question/answer
from my side.  Perhaps this was because people were very polite, waited
their turn, and did not talk over each other.

Fred Baker set up the session a day in advance and sent the WebEx
session details out to me a day prior to the meeting, so that I could
make sure that everything was set up from my end.  I had given him the
slides last Thursday, and he had already uploaded them to WebEx before
my session started - so everything was in order.

I think one of the keys to a successful WebEx session is to plan
everything and set up everything in advance to the actual meeting - so
that you can focus on the IETF discussion/presentation/questions and not
on the conferencing technology.

All in all, I think we had a very pleasant, useful and productive
session. 

- Wes

-----Original Message-----
From: Carolin Latze [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2009 11:14 AM
To: Wes Beebee (wbeebee)
Cc: Scott Lawrence; Russ Housley; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [vmeet] Stockholm

Carolin

>> but

> I was one of those remote presenters (the DISPATCH session).  I 
> decided to cancel my presentation rather than attempt it remotely.
>
> This was only in part due to the difficulties in being remote, but 
> they were a factor: in particular, the total lack of information on 
> how remote participation would work, what I would need at my end, and 
> the fact that WebEx won't work from my normal Linux work environment.

> I was not able to find any information at all (despite repeated 
> requests) on how I could test anything in advance.
>

---

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:03:14 +0200

> It seemed like just a normal phone call on my end today in the WebEx

Wes, many thanks for the quick report.  Glad things went well.

>      Also, even though I'm in Boxborough, MA and the other

I suspect that a question/answer segment is the most challenging to make work 
well for remote participation, because it involves multiple people who are 
active and can have fast shifts from one participant to the other.

Do you have a sense of the number of people who were active during the Q/A segment?

Your observation that participants were careful and polite is significant.

Compared with having speaker and audience in the same room, can you offer any 
other comments about what was different and whether it could have caused problems?

Any other comments about the experience?

Again, thanks?

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

---

From: Doug Otis <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:51:01 +0200

> only going to focus on the two sessions that need to support remote

Remote presentations in the Large Stage also included a presenter
who had someone patch a laptop into the PA system to enable a
speaker with a heavy accent.  This setup suffered from poor audio
quality compared to what WebEx had been providing.

There were several other problems beyond those with remote sound
problems during Monday.  Congress Hall C had a pin 9 of a video cable
grounded which shorted video adapters for two presenter's PC laptops
(where I understand they were required to completely power-off to recover).

The Small Stage also had a problem where a Video to CAT5 converter
failed to identify itself as a display, that then confused several older
versions of Mac laptop's Autodetect.

Delays created by presenters attempting to connect their laptops to the
digital display device, or a lack of standardization for remote
presentations could be remedied by using pre-configured net-boxes in 
each meeting room.

Such use would create two pre-conditions for presenters:

1) Slides would need to be published on a web accessible file server.

2) Utilization of a common control mechanism such as WebEx, VNC, or a
wireless media keyboard. (The keyboard could provide an emergency
fall-back mode.)

The Mute key on the keyboard could also enable remote presenters that
might use VoIP or some alternative to avoid reliance upon third-party
services, such as WebEx which omits VoIP with their Event for 
non-Windows clients.  The Net-Box could also source a web-stream of live 
slide presentations as an alternative to WebEx that would not require 
prior arrangements.

Pre-configured net-boxes could allow better integration with remote
presenters as well as enable remote question microphones not made
available in the Large Stage WebEx presentations.  To support a remote
question microphone, some queuing mechanism is needed, such as the
feature found in the WebEx Event client.

By using net-boxes as a tie-point for remote audio feeds, perhaps this
could standardize what is needed to bring up remote audio feeds.

While the IETF operates within a small budget, the IETF would also be
providing leadership in how to better utilize networks to improve remote
participation.  Use of net-boxes would not represent much in the way of
additional equipment to store and ship.  They would not require much in
the way of an expenditure, perhaps $300 x 12 (50% surplus) even when
considered disposable.  Importantly, these devices could help ensure
fewer delays and availability of live slide and audio, along with access 
to remote microphones for remote presenters and questioners.

-Doug

---

From: "Wes Beebee (wbeebee)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:19:14 -0400

>>      Also, even though I'm in Boxborough, MA and the other side was 
>> Stockholm, I didn't notice much of a delay in question/answer from my

>> side.  Perhaps this was because people were very polite, waited their

>> turn, and did not talk over each other.
>
>I suspect that a question/answer segment is the most challenging to
make work well for remote participation, 
>because it involves multiple people who are active and can have fast
shifts from one participant to the other.
>Do you have a sense of the number of people who were active during the
Q/A segment?

Actually, not really - because either they didn't identify themselves or
I was focusing more on what the questions were asking than who was
asking them...  That's actually something that's impossible to ignore
when in person, but is easy to miss when participating remotely.  Either
you can decide that it's not important, or if it is - then video of
who's at the mike would be helpful here.  If we lived in a purely
democratic world, then it ideally wouldn't matter who asked the
question.  Which is kind of interesting - remote presentation can have
the effect of giving everybody a fair shake...

> Compared with having speaker and audience in the same room, can you
offer any other comments about what was
> different and whether it could have caused problems?

Well, with a remote presenter, the conversation has to be a little more
controlled and less spontaneous.  Thanks to Fred for doing a good job of
moderating.  Also, everything needs to be well-planned in advance -
which I think was also well done in the v6ops session.   In person, you
can slack off to some extent with the planning and not get hurt too
badly - but remote presentation really forces everyone to be on their
game.

> Any other comments about the experience?

Well, you don't get the back-room discussions when presenting remotely -
and to some extent, better use of the mailer, private E-mails, and phone
calls to individuals/groups between IETF's can help make up for the lack
of interaction.  Because the intensity of interaction is less when not
attending IETF, you have to plan to have more hours of interaction with
key individuals in order to have the same productivity when editing a
working group work item.

> Again, thanks?

And many thanks to Fred Baker for allowing me to present remotely and
making it go as smoothly as possible.

- Wes

---

From: "Wes Beebee (wbeebee)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:33:24 -0400

> Remote presentations in the Large Stage also included a presenter who
had someone patch a laptop into the PA 
> system to enable a speaker with a heavy accent.  This setup suffered
from poor audio quality compared to what
> WebEx had been providing.

It's really important for remote speakers to speak slowly, clearly, and
spend extra time on proper enunciation and communication.  For those who
don't use WebEx, you may need to provide regular audio clues as to what
slide you're on - such as reading the title of the slide as you move to
it.

Regarding audio - remote presenters should avoid Best Effort VoIP
clients on the computer - partly because of typical microphone quality
on laptops and because of packet drops, dropped calls, and distortion
from audio compression.  Presenting from a quiet conference room, with
no one else in the room and the door shut, sitting close to a standard
standalone conference telephone works really well.

- Wes