Subject: Results of Meeting Room Experiment at IETF66

From: Jeffrey Altman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 13:36:51 -0400

On Monday the Kitten, Kerberos and SASL working groups performed an
experiment aimed at improving the productivity of the working group.

(1) In addition to the chair and standing floor microphone there
were two wireless microphones available for use by those seated in
the first three rows.  (aka, those who are familiar with the working
group documents.)  This has the benefit of changing the communication
dynamic from a presenter and a queue of questions/comments at the
floor microphone to a fully interactive discussion.  The extra
microphones can easily be passed around and this ensures that the
number of comments that do not make it onto the audio stream is minimized.

The extra microphones were first used in Paris and we have requested
their availability at each of the subsequent meetings.

(2) A second video projector and screen were deployed for use in
projecting the Jabber chat room.  The benefit of projecting the
Jabber stream is that everyone in the meeting room can see the
text message discussions.  This improves the ability of remote
participants to interact with the discussions taking place within
the room.  The time delay associated with the audio stream broadcast
appears to be approximately five seconds with a smaller delay associated
with the text message dialog.  This delay appears to be quite manageable
and is easily taken into account when the chair attempts to determine
consensus calls.

I believe that these additions significantly improve the productivity
of the working group sessions and it would be wonderful if we can
somehow figure out how to afford the expense for all future working
group meetings.

Jeffrey Altman

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From: Tony Hansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 14:09:34 -0400

Jeffrey, thanks for describing your experiences.

There were a couple of groups I was in this week when I *missed* having
portable mikes as described below. A couple of the groups unhooked the
floor mike and used the long cord there to get some of the interactivity
that you describe. I'm glad to know that a few groups got real portable
mikes and were able to make good use of them.

Perhaps we could have a way of requesting such extra mikes when the WG
chair puts in the meeting request. Some WG meetings are conducive to
their use, while others are not. This way the secretariat can get more
feedback as to which WGs *would* find them useful, and how pervasive
such equipment deployment should be.

	Tony Hansen
	[email-masked]

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From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 14:29:09 -0400

> such equipment deployment should be.

The meeting session request tool includes a field for comments and special 
requests; you can use this to request things like additional microphones. 
If you request additional microphones, you should indicate whether you need 
wired or wireless mics; we found out this week that the rental fees for 
wireless mics can be significantly higher than for wired mics.

FWIW, I was also in several meetings this week that could have benefitted 
from the extra microphones.  It's really going to depend on your meeting 
style; in Kerberos and Kitten we have developed a style in which most of 
the meeting is normally spent on discussion rather than presentations, and 
having multiple mics really helps a lot with that.

-- Jeff, krb-wg chair

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 18:59:38 +0200

I think people should experiment. Now one word of caution -
hotels and conference centres charge a lot of money for AV
equipment (that's why we own a batch of projectors). I don't mean
to say "don't ask for radio mikes etc." but please don't
ask for them unless you really expect to use them.

     Brian

Jeffrey Hutzelman wrote:
> The meeting session request tool includes a field for comments and 
> special requests; you can use this to request things like additional 
> microphones. If you request additional microphones, you should indicate 
> whether you need wired or wireless mics; we found out this week that the 
> rental fees for wireless mics can be significantly higher than for wired 
> mics.
> 
> FWIW, I was also in several meetings this week that could have 
> benefitted from the extra microphones.  It's really going to depend on 
> your meeting style; in Kerberos and Kitten we have developed a style in 
> which most of the meeting is normally spent on discussion rather than 
> presentations, and having multiple mics really helps a lot with that.
> 
> -- Jeff, krb-wg chair
> 
>

---

From: Tony Hansen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:58:16 -0400

How's the price of wired mikes? Would a few extra wired mikes with long
cords be expensive?

	Tony Hansen
	[email-masked]

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From: "James M. Polk" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:20:28 -0500

Managing the order of those who wish to make comments becomes a speaker 
challenge, in some meetings, potentially distracting the speaker retaining 
state in their minds to keep up with who's next in line, rather than on the 
person speaking.

In meetings where everyone is polite, this is fine in my experience - but I 
believe this cannot be idealistically viewed as a way of "getting the room 
to be polite" if it isn't already.

Another dynamic that pops up in the mobile mike situation is discussion 
between the mikes, and not generally to and from the presenter.  With a 
single mike and people in queue, there is more likely to be one person 
speaking at a time, and not more than one trying to speak over the other 
each with a mike.  This is not a constructive scenario, and I have 
observed, and been a part of, this several times in the past 10 years.

I'm not saying multiple mikes doesn't work.  I'm suggesting an honest 
assessment of paticipants and their behaviors is likely necessary before 
this experiment is conducted. Chairs ought to also be prepared to take the 
mobile mikes away from the room if things get out of hand (tangents or 
ratholes or other).

At 02:29 PM 7/13/2006 -0400, Jeffrey Hutzelman wrote:

>On Thursday, July 13, 2006 02:09:34 PM -0400 Tony Hansen <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>If you request additional microphones, you should indicate whether you 
>need wired or wireless mics; we found out this week that the rental fees 
>for wireless mics can be significantly higher than for wired mics.
>

---

From: Jeffrey Altman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 18:53:17 -0400

James M. Polk wrote:
> between the mikes, and not generally to and from the presenter.

The whole point of the mobile microphones is to prevent the need to
focus the discussion on a presentation.  In our working groups we want
to use the valuable face time not to present something that people could
read a paper on but to actively solve the outstanding technical issues
that remain with the work we are attempting to complete.

Jeffrey Altman

---

From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2006 20:22:28 -0400 (EDT)

> that remain with the work we are attempting to complete.

Exactly.  If you are in a presentation mode, you really only want the one
floor mic; multiple mobile microphones will be disruptive.

Incidentally, if you do have people giving presentatioins, please consider
asking people to hold their questions until the end of the presentation.
This makes it easier to understand the presentation, is more fair to those
who are polite enough to do this on their own, and makes managing the time
easier, too.  Of course, the situation is different if the presenter is
trying to get discussion or feedback with each slide.

-- Jeff

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From: "James Kempf" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 09:54:27 -0700

I've started asking people to hold questions during presentations until 
afterwards. I usually suggest that if they find they have a question, they 
should write it down and then bring it up to the mike after the 
presentation. I started doing this after I noticed in a few WGs that the 
presenters either never got to the end of their presentations (i.e. the WG 
ran out of time during the presentation) because of the number of people at 
the mike, or the whole point of presentation was lost due to a long queue of 
people who really didn't have questions on the presentation, but rather were 
trying to make a point about their views, which contrasted with the 
presenter's. On the agenda, we explicitly list a discussion period after the 
presentation, so that people know they have time to ask questions or make 
points. So far, this seems to work better at fostering discussion between 
the WG members and the presenter, and among the WG members.

            jak

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 11:49:40 +0200

Ray, any idea of the typical costs of extra wireless and wired mikes?

     Brian