Subject: Re: [vmeet] PSTN bridges

From: Paul Hoffman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 11:36:53 -0800

Coming back to this topic with a different slant: if people strongly prefer jabber-to-mic over remote-voice-to-room, how does that meet with the desire to have remote presenters? Are people against remote presenters, or are you asking for jabber-to-mic for questions but remote-voice-to-room for presentations?

--Paul Hoffman

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From: Yoav Nir <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 22:44:39 +0200

> Coming back to this topic with a different slant: if people strongly prefer jabber-to-mic over remote-voice-to-room, how does that meet with the desire to have remote presenters? Are people against…

In my opinion a remote-voice-to-room presentation is the lesser of two evils, or maybe the lesser of three evils, the greater two being not getting the presentation at all and getting the presentation over jabber-to-mic.

Questions and comments from disembodied voices are disruptive. It's difficult to tell who's talking and what they're saying, and the person talking has a hard time telling if their question was heard, and it just gets worse for non-native English speakers. Questions in writing read off a screen or by either a chair or a "jabber scribe" flow more naturally. Yes, it's difficult to carry the conversation with jabber, but I don't think that works too well with a disembodied voice either. I remember we were both at a particular session in Taipei, where the absent co-chair kept coming on the speaker. I believe you'll agree that this was disrupting the normal flow of conversation.

With the presentor we don't have much choice. It's either remote-voice or not at all or have someone else give the presentation. A single disembodied voice is better than not getting the presentation at all.

Yoav

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From: John Leslie <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 2012 19:33:20 -0500

Yoav Nir <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Questions and comments from disembodied voices are disruptive.

   I don't think I'd agree they're necessarily "disruptive", but thank
you for stating something specific enough to talk about.

   There are definitely cases where the number of participants in the
physical room is small enough that you can follow exactly who's talking.
In such cases, I agree that adding a voice not in the room and not
clearly identified _is_ disruptive.

   But this doesn't strike me as impossible to overcome. If it's clear
who's participating remotely, and abundantly clear which one of them
is talking, it need not be disruptive. (However, it shouldn't be a
surprise when one of the remote participants starts talking!)

> It's difficult to tell who's talking and what they're saying,

   That we can fix.

> and the person talking has a hard time telling if their question was
> heard, and it just gets worse for non-native English speakers.

   Yes, that can be hard. The state of the art in echo cancellation
isn't good enough for the remote participant to hear the room reaction
in real-time, unless s/he is using headphones (in which case the echo
of his/her own voice is likely disruptive to the remote speaker).

   The surest cure is for a local participant to "restate" the question
if it seems unclear. (It's not all that unusual for a speaker to restate
a local question anyway.)

> Questions in writing read off a screen or by either a chair or a
> "jabber scribe" flow more naturally.

   Questions in writing always make it easier to be sure you're answering
the right question. (I suspect we could benefit by asking for questions
in writing before putting any questioner on-mike...)

> Yes, it's difficult to carry the conversation with jabber, but I don't
> think that works too well with a disembodied voice either.

   There is a largely-solved problem of when to pause and when to speak
whenever delay exceeds about 100 milliseconds. But people do adjust...

> I remember we were both at a particular session in Taipei, where the
> absent co-chair kept coming on the speaker. I believe you'll agree
> that this was disrupting the normal flow of conversation.

   Not having been there, I can't "agree"; but it seems likely...

   Nonetheless, when a WGC _needs_ to say something, it's best to _say_
it. Admitedly, not all WGCs limit themselves to what _needs_ to be said.

> With the presentor we don't have much choice. It's either remote-voice
> or not at all or have someone else give the presentation. A single
> disembodied voice is better than not getting the presentation at all.

   I agree.

   Further, I'd opine that presentations by local attendees that aren't
_very_ familiar with the work are inherently problemmatic.

   I'd like to try to state these problems of remote participation, and
see if we can come up with "requirements" which ameliorate them.

--
John Leslie <[email-masked]>

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From: "Alessandro Amirante - Meetecho s.r.l." <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:13:23 +0100

You might want to consider two different profiles for remote 
participants: "frequent" and "occasional" talkers.
For people falling in the former category (e.g., a remote presenter or a 
remote WGC), remote-voice-to-room should be a MUST.
For people in the latter group, jabber-to-mic might be enough.

Generally speaking, support for remote presentations should be a MUST.

My 2 cents,
A.

Il 01/02/2012 20:36, Paul Hoffman ha scritto:
> _______________________________________________
> NOTE WELL: This list operates according to
> http://mipassoc.org/dkim/ietf-list-rules.html.
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/vmeet

-- 
Alessandro Amirante, Ph.D.

Meetecho S.r.l.
www.meetecho.com

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From: Yoav Nir <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 13:35:44 +0200

> remote WGC), remote-voice-to-room should be a MUST.

+1

> For people in the latter group, jabber-to-mic might be enough.

s/might be/is/

> Generally speaking, support for remote presentations should be a MUST.

Fully agree

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From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:29:33 -0500

Let me say that I am agree with Yoav in being opposed to a
phone-bridge-style-speakerphone remote-voice-to-room mechanism.   
That's what gives us disembodied voices disrupting the room.
I also agree that it can be very hard for non-english speakers to make
themselves heard remotely.  

Even for english speakers, sometimes it is hard to say precisely what
you want; there is some advantage of limiting to about 144 characters
(not that jabber has this limit...) for the question.

As John Leslie said, there are many technical solutions to the
phone-bridge-style of conference.  

Finally let me say that for many meetings that I run (admitedly usually
with far fewer participants), I insist that if some of us are remote,
that all of us are remote. i.e. the group who is in one place do not
gather in a conference room, but stay at their desks.  This has FAR MORE
useful and fair.   I don't think that we can do this for our
3-times-a-year gathering, but I want to see this for virtual interim
meetings. 

So, I'd like to see us solve the virtual interim meeting problem, and
then bring a subset of that proceedure into the current in-person
meetings.  In particular, I hope that this will mean that we do not
spend half of the in-person meeting recap'ing what happened at the
interim meeting that some people could not attend.

-- 
]       He who is tired of Weird Al is tired of life!           |  firewalls  [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works, Ottawa, ON    |net architect[
] [email-masked] http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/ |device driver[
   Kyoto Plus: watch the video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzx1ycLXQSE>
	               then sign the petition.

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From: "Martin J. Dürst" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:59:58 +0900

>> remote WGC), remote-voice-to-room should be a MUST.

Fully agreed; it might also include document editors,...

>> For people in the latter group, jabber-to-mic might be enough.

Probably yes. With current technology, there's still quite some overhead 
if somebody wants to actually speak:
- Get the right software up and running
- Make a request to be on the queue
- Get the "okay, you're up at the mike now" from the chair
- Asking "can you hear me"
- Various potential complications here (still muted,...)
- finally actually getting to say something.

We should be flexible so that we encourage relayed communication for 
short comments and questions, and voice communication for longer 
discussions.

We should also make sure that we don't treat relayed communication as 
third-grade citizens (the remoters that can actually speak being the 
second-grade citizens). That's why I have explicitly avoided the word 
"Jabber"; even if it's XMPP, we should make sure that we have one 
integrated channel for all kinds of activity, not two or three (e.g. 
WebEx chat, Meechko (sorry, forgot how it's actually spelled) chat, 
Jabber, and maybe even something else). It may be okay to have different 
software at different ends, but only if we can assure that these get 
integrated into a single location/channel for communication/control.

For those who know that they may want to speak, there should be a short 
slot before the meeting where audio is tested. Currently, this is done 
unofficially, but often not seriously enough.

>> Generally speaking, support for remote presentations should be a MUST.

Yes, please!

Regards,   Martin.

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From: "Alessandro Amirante - Meetecho s.r.l." <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:17:28 +0100

On 02/03/2012 01:59, "Martin J. Dürst" wrote:
> we should make sure that we have one integrated channel for all kinds of
> activity, not two or three (e.g. WebEx chat, Meechko (sorry, forgot how
> it's actually spelled) chat, Jabber, and maybe even something else). It
> may be okay to have different software at different ends, but only if we
> can assure that these get integrated into a single location/channel for
> communication/control.

I think this is already stated in the draft (see section 4.2.3).

I'd suggest to rephrase Req.01-19 and Req.01-20 by explicitly saying 
that the tool MUST be able to relay the official IETF Jabber rooms.

A.

Meetecho S.r.l.
www.meetecho.com