Subject: [vmeet] FRAME: Peanut Gallery

From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:38:16 -0700

The current mode of remote participation is to listen to an audio broadcast and 
read a jabber session.  This mode is useful for those wishing to monitor a 
session, but not very helpful for actual participation.

With careful diligence by local jabber participants, a remote participant can 
awkwardly offer comments.  While this has been sometimes used for serious 
contribution by remote attendees, it's not realistic to rely on it widely.

d
-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net

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From: Scott Brim <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:58:26 -0400

Excerpts from Dave CROCKER on Tue, Mar 31, 2009 12:38:16PM -0700:
> The current mode of remote participation is to listen to an audio
> broadcast and read a jabber session.  This mode is useful for those
> wishing to monitor a session, but not very helpful for actual
> participation.
>
> With careful diligence by local jabber participants, a remote
> participant can awkwardly offer comments.  While this has been
> sometimes used for serious contribution by remote attendees, it's
> not realistic to rely on it widely.
>
> d

Dave: I'm not sure what you're saying so to clarify: people who are
very involved in discussion cannot be asked to monitor jabber sessions
for questions -- so asking questions by any means will depend on
people local to the meeting, whether jabber participants or whatever.

One good thing that happens in jabber sessions is that a remote
question/comment might be answered by other people on the session, and
not take meeting time.  This reminds me of the setup on MediaMoo where
you could "sit" at a "table" and direct your discussion comments
either to your "table" or to the "room" at large.  That's still a good
idea.  Written comments can be scoped -- sometimes there is no reason
for everyone to hear them.

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From: "Spencer Dawkins" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:07:44 -0500

> With careful diligence by local jabber participants, a remote participant 
> can awkwardly offer comments.  While this has been sometimes used for 
> serious contribution by remote attendees, it's not realistic to rely on it 
> widely.

Yeah, I'd agree with this. At IETF 74, about half of MEDIACTRL's serious 
contributors were participating remotely, and the 5-seconds-or-so delay 
between reality (which included the jabber feed) and the audio feed made 
this participation pretty problematic.

There were specific questions that we addressed to the remote participants, 
and the RTT was great enough that we often decided that the remote 
participant wasn't going to respond. We would go on, and then be interrupted 
by a late answer.

I saw Hannes using Skype with external speakers in ECRIT at IETF 73, and it 
looked like it was working to ME, but I don't think Hannes was as happy as I 
was with this.

One minor point that I'm not sure if people have thought about yet - I also 
brought a $400 netbook along on the trip, so that I could drive 
presentations and still have a working system available to check text in 
drafts, monitor the jabber conversation if someone said to look in the 
jabber room, etc. I don't know that I'd recommend this for everyone, but 
since I already have a netbook, I expect to bring it next time, too.

And the prices are still falling - I think one of the 9" systems would work 
for what I used my system for, and they're at or below $250 for popular 
selections...

Thanks,

Spencer

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From: Marc Petit-Huguenin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:10:56 -0700

Dave CROCKER wrote:
> participant can awkwardly offer comments.  While this has been sometimes
> used for serious contribution by remote attendees, it's not realistic to
> rely on it widely.

Is remote participation something that ISOC is considering?
(opposed to remotely following the sessions).  If the number of
local participants decreases, the fee would most likely increase to
compensate for the lost revenues.  I do not know if it is good or a
bad thing, but I would like to hear ISOC point of view on this.

FYI our proposal explicitly excluded remote participation because of
this open question.  Remote participation was planned for a later
phase (as was video).

-- 
Marc Petit-Huguenin
Home: [email-masked]
Work: [email-masked]

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From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:23:17 -0400

Scott Brim wrote:
> not take meeting time.  

Right, and in some groups there's a bunch of variously
entertaining or enlightening back-chatter that wouldn't
be able to happen if everyone were in the same room.
In that sense a good conferencing tool can enable behaviors
that aren't possible in a conventional setting, and
that can be extremely useful.

[Although there are some requirements in there for
the ability to moderate well - I was in a non-IETF
remote session last year that was attacked and rendered
unusable by someone who was literally 12 years old]

Melinda

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From: Fred Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:41:45 -0700

At this point it is an IETF discussion, and the IAOC (see BCP 101) is  
interested in it. ISOC will get involved if we ask them to.

At the recent IETF, I had three meetings (one of which I chaired) in  
which remote participation would have really helped due to visa  
problems. I did a thing with my cell phone and an in-room mike to  
facilitate a remote presenter on Friday. It was a bit of a circus, but  
it actually worked surprisingly well.

WebEx or equivalent would have been better.

On Mar 31, 2009, at 1:10 PM, Marc Petit-Huguenin wrote:

>> sometimes
> _______________________________________________
> NOTE WELL: This list operates according to
> http://mipassoc.org/dkim/ietf-list-rules.html.
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/vmeet

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From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:20:05 -0400

This was discussed at the IETF 74 Plenary session.  I want to do all 
that I can do to ensure that the IETF work is accomplished in the 
face of declining face-to-face participation due to the economic 
situation.  We cannot get to the point where remote participation is 
the same as being in the room, but I believe that we can do better 
than we are doing today.

Russ Housley
IETF Chair

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From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:03:36 -0700

Marc Petit-Huguenin wrote:
> (opposed to remotely following the sessions).  

Apologies for not posting a note at the start.  The Wednesday plenary session, 
last week, was both intense and -- somewhat at odds with IETF patterns for 
discussing problems during a plenary -- productive, if only by virtue of 
establishing the basis for this effort.  Anyhow, the intensity turned out to 
make it easy to forget that not everyone was in the room...

I see two issues as converging.  One is the economic challenges that make *any* 
travel quite a bit more difficult to cost justify.  This has always been an 
issue for international travel but has gotten much worse, and even extends into 
domestic trips.  The second is the barrier caused by delayed and difficult visa 
processes.  While this, too, has always been a problem for some attendees -- no 
matter the country in which the meeting was to be held -- it has gotten markedly 
worse in recent years.

In combination, these mean that significant working group participants are often 
unable to attend one or another of the IETF meetings in person.

So, all of this creates quite a bit of incentive for us to find ways to enable 
full-fledged participation by those unable to be in the room of an IETF meeting. 
  In the extreme, one could envision have a complete IETF meeting with no 
physical room.  All attendance could be virtual.

Not something we are likely to achieve quickly, but it's a concrete goal and can 
have some interesting and useful milestones along the way. Virtual IESG, IAB and 
IAOC meetings represent one of those milestones and, if done entirely over the 
Internet, could save a hefty chunk of money.

As for meeting fees, yes, that's an issue.  But it's not one this effort needs 
to solve.  This effort is strictly technical/operational.

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker

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From: Dave CROCKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:32:56 -0700

Spencer Dawkins wrote:
> One minor point that I'm not sure if people have thought about yet - I 
> also brought a $400 netbook along on the trip, so that I could drive 

Spencer, so the netbook was for the front-of-room, to collect and display slides?

And then you used your regular laptop for your own stuff?

I don't know if this is a path we want this group to walk down, but it's 
probably worth asking whether having a laptop dedicated to each room -- along 
with a dedicated projector -- creates interesting changes in the operation of a 
meeting?

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker