Subject: [vmeet] Remote throwing/launching of objects

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:25:38 -0400

Hi.

I suggested in the rpsreqs Jabber log that we equip meeting
rooms with the sort of devices that are used to launch tennis
balls for practice purposes, get them Internet enabled, and
permit properly-authenticated remote participants to activate
them, throwing balls at the session chairs if remote participant
input requests were being ignored or other severe problems
existed.  That would not only provide an effective mechanism for
getting the attention of meetings that were ignoring the Jabber
stream, but would provide the remote people an incentive to get
serious about voluntary authentication ("you want to be able to
interrupt the meeting, you have to sign up").  

Of course, we could use a special version in plenaries that
could launch either cookies or ripe fruit, thereby saving a lot
of microphone time :-) 

That, I hope obviously, was entirely in jest.  However, it just
occurred to me that a related idea might actually be both
feasible and useful (and low-complexity).   It seems to me that
we could easily whip up a device that would respond to a simple
message (https ping, XMPP -- the details aren't important right
now) that we could adequately authenticate or match to a
registration by, for example, turning on a prominent "remote
user awaiting attention" light that would be visible to the
chair and throughout the room.  It would need an Internet
connection or to be attached to something that had one, but
would otherwise not be rocket science... and would have solved
many of this week's problems when one or more remote people just
couldn't get attention from those in the room.

Worth thinking about as an additional small requirement?

   john

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From: "Martin J. Dürst" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 01 Apr 2012 14:33:15 +0900

Hello John, others,

On 2012/03/30 23:25, John C Klensin wrote:

> However, it just

Would definitely be a very good thing to have!

But let me propose another, maybe slightly more radical, idea:

I think we should have remote chairing as a requirement. And by that I 
don't mean "it should be possible to chair a meeting remotely", but "all 
meetings must be chaired remotely".

Why that? If you are in the room, it's very easy to forget that there 
are remote participants, or to get overwhelmed by the local participants 
who may be under the impression that it's a local meeting.

This is not really anybody's fault; for millions of years, it was mostly 
enough to deal with just what happened closeby and was visible. Humans 
are (reasonably) good at focusing attention, but that means that other 
things get ignored. Out of sight, out of mind, that's what it is called.

So the proposal to have the chair remote will assure that at least the 
chair will not have a room full of local attendees in front of him/her 
who grab his/her attention, and can be reasonably impartial to whether 
they are remote or local.

For that to work, of course, the chair has to have the power to switch 
on and cut off any and all of the mikes. Because there's the chance that 
the locals start in-room conversations without the chair's ack, the 
chair also should get a device that allows to flood the meeting room 
with noise (at the same time closing the mikes; or maybe just a little 
howling would do the job?) that will make ad-hoc communication 
impossible and get everybody's attention back together.

Of course, there's then the problem of chairs wanting to be at the 
meeting. It's difficult to deny this, in particular because local beer 
will feel much better than remote beer (or whatever your beverage of 
choice). But there's an easy solution: When chairing, the chairs should 
just stay in their hotel rooms, or out in the lobby, or some such.

If you wonder, then yes, I wrote most of this mail on April 1st. But how 
to make sure the locals don't forget that there are remotes is a serious 
one, and if we can come up with a few more crazy ideas, then maybe there 
are some more useful ones among them.

Regards,    Martin.

P.S.: Another small but important point when participating remote is 
getting a clear signal that the meeting closed. Some chairs may indeed 
say so in one way or another, but even a second of unattentiveness may 
make this overheard. Putting something like "meeting adjourned at 11:30" 
or so into jabber is extremely helpful.