Subject: [vmeet] FRAME: 5 easy things chairs can do TODAY to improve remote participation

From: Philip Matthews <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 11:58:18 -0400

When I stood up at the microphone at the Plenary last month and  
commented on the difficulty of participating remotely, I was thinking  
of some simple things that people can do immediately to improve the  
remote participation process. The following suggestions are distilled  
from my experiences in participating remotely in IETF72 (Dublin) and  
IETF73 (Minneapolis).

5 easy things chairs can do TODAY to improve remote participation
=================================================================

1) Ensure the slides  are uploaded HALF AN HOUR before the meeting  
begins, with a descriptive name.
You might be surprised at how often slides are not uploaded until  
after the presentation starts, or even after the session is over. And  
the names are often random (and the slides are always shown in the  
order of uploading, not in agenda order). Having them available half  
an hour before the presentation makes it possible for someone to  
download them before the session begins.

2) Check to make sure the audio works well BEFORE the meeting begins.
Audio problems (especially audio too low) are frequent. Chairs can  
join the audio stream and check the quality/volume a few minutes  
before the session begins.

3) Appoint a Jabber person for each session.
Some working groups have a Jabber scribe who tried to capture  
everything that is said, but many participants would be happy with  
someone who just posting notes like "About to start the presentation  
on X" and "Now on slide 5". These little clues make it much easier to  
link the audio with the slides.

4) Ensure that each slide is numbered.
Most slide decks today do not have slide numbers, which make it hard  
to answer the question "What slide are we on?".

5) Ensure that everyone uses the microphone and states their name.
Even today, lapses often occur.

Here are a few action items which could make the above more common:  
(ADs: Are you listening?)
a) Have the secretariat remind chairs about these points before the  
meeting. For (1) and (4), ask them to tell their presenters in advance.
b) Get the secretariat to prepare a slide about (5) which chairs  
display just after the NOTE WELL slide.
c) Have ADs monitor the situation in their working groups.

- Philip

---

From: Nathaniel Borenstein <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 12:08:42 -0400

This is all true, but there's a meta-comment to be made:  Much of the  
work of making virtual meetings work is not technical, but social.  A  
good etiquette guide could be as valuable as any tool we could build,  
and should be one of our deliverables.  -- Nathanie

On Apr 4, 2009, at 11:58 AM, Philip Matthews wrote:

> commented on the difficulty of participating remotely, I was  
> thinking of some simple things that people can do immediately to  
> improve the remote participation process. The following suggestions  
> are distilled from my experiences in participating remotely in  
> IETF72 (Dublin) and IETF73 (Minneapolis).
>
>
> after the presentation starts, or even after the session is over.  
> And the names are often random (and the slides are always shown in  
> the order of uploading, not in agenda order). Having them available  
> half an hour before the presentation makes it possible for someone  
> to download them before the session begins.
>
> on X" and "Now on slide 5". These little clues make it much easier  
> to link the audio with the slides.
>
> _______________________________________________
> NOTE WELL: This list operates according to
> http://mipassoc.org/dkim/ietf-list-rules.html.
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/vmeet

---

From: "Arnoud van Wijk" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 18:35:34 +0200

> > before the session begins.

Yes, and we cannot control the audio end to end.
So here is that RTT, real-time text can supplement the audio.

> > to link the audio with the slides.

A real-time text transcriber actually captures everything what is spoken.
Every comment, "next slide" " your mic is not working" " louder please" etc
will also be captured. 
:-)

I have seen an experiment with RFID tags that actually detects who is
speaking in the Mic. That can also help.

Arnoud

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Arnoud van Wijk
Disability Projects Coordinator
email: [email-masked]
SIP (ToIP) [email-masked]
FAX +31412614000                            
Internet Society (ISOC)       "The Internet is for everyone"
http://www.isoc.org
----------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:10:03 -0400

Excellent summary Philip.

> 5 easy things chairs can do TODAY to improve remote participation

Actually, there are two differnt kinds of remote participation. Remote
listening/following, and remote CONTRIBUTING.  Although this may not
have been intended, nothing in above list is about CONTRIBUTING, it was
just about being able to follow what was going on during the meeting
in real-time.  That is step 1.

I think this group would do well to develop a Best Practices document
describing how to maximize remote "listening". Some if this is fairly
straightforward to do, but I have also experienced that WGs are
inconsistent. Writing it down and getting WG chairs to support them
would be a big step forward.

Second, remotely contributing is more complex, and there are multiple
levels:

1) be able to comment in a chat room (and hope that someone notices).

2) be able to do the equivalent of "getting in line at  the
microphone" in order to make a point. Today, we do not have a formal
way of doing that, though some WGs do this via ad hoc approaches.

2a) Reading a text message at the microphone is one way of having
remote input, but it is limited. It doesn't work well for a lot of
back and forth (I've tried it).

2b) get some sort of audio feed, so a remote speaker can actually
speak to the room. Actually, there are at least two cases here as
well. Remote audience participation vs. a remote presenter.

I think this group should focus on the abvoe more immediate problems
first (i.e., something that we can do in the next few months) rather
than trying to do more major changes to meetings. It is good to think
long-term, but none of that will happen if we can't even make some
simple short-term changes and show that they can work.

If I look at how the IETF works today (at the main meetings), white
boards are rarely used. Slideware rules (like it or not).

As a side note, remote listening doesn't have to be done in real
time. One can get mp3s and follow after the fact. This actually has
some advantages.. For one thing, you don't ever lose the audio feed do
to network issues. You can also pause the recording when you get
interrupted, etc. There is work we could do here as well, such as try
to better organize the mp3s so folk can easily find what they are
looking for. E.g., I've sometimes thought a wiki would be useful where
people who actually try using the mp3s can index them by saying at
what time offset in each recording various agenda items begin that
they have found. Today, just finding the right recording for a
paritcular WG meeting takes an "insider" to be able to do, since they
are just indexed by time/date/meeting room.

Thomas

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From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 13:47:18 -0400

+1

In fact it might make sense for us to write 2 docs, for any style or technology 
mode of operation that we propose :

the first would be the frictional spec. the technical pieces and what services 
they will provide

 The second would be a usage guide _ how should we use within Service 
configuration. And "usage" would include basic participant etiquette.

 /d

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net