Subject: Meetecho experiences in Prague

From: Russ Housley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2011 10:48:12 -0400

If you have experience with Meetecho, please share them on the vmeet mail list.

Russ

Begin forwarded message:

>> Some WGs experimented with Meetecho in Prague.  What went right?  What went wrong?  What is needed for this to be useful across the board?
>> 
>> Russ

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From: Simon Pietro Romano <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Apr 2011 17:13:06 +0200

I obviously have experience with Meetecho...but I'm afraid my 
perspective might be a little biased ;-). I can only 'impartially' say 
that I used it in SPLICES and it worked fine. For a summary of the 
sessions we supported, you can have a look at: 
http://ietf.conf.meetecho.com/. The mentioned site also hosts recordings 
of the supported sessions.

Cheers,

Simon

-- 
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    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~o00~~(_)~~00o~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                     Simon Pietro Romano
               Universita' di Napoli Federico II
                  Computer Science Department
         Phone: +39 081 7683823 -- Fax: +39 081 7684219
                 e-mail: [email-masked]
           http://www.comics.unina.it/simonpietro.romano

     <<Molti mi dicono che lo scoraggiamento è l'alibi degli
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From: Eric Burger <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2011 20:26:47 -0400

I Jabber scribed a session that had Meetecho. All the remote participants were on Meetecho, which made my life a lot easier - no need to say, "we're on slide xxxx."

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From: "Richard L. Barnes" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2011 23:44:20 -0400

+1

I think I'm thinking of the same session as Eric (and forgetting which session it was), but Meetecho seemed to bridge very seamlessly with the Jabber room, plus it had the slide images.

The only drawback was that the slide flipping was being done manually (by someone on the Meetecho team, I think :) ), instead of being automatically in sync with the presenter.

--Richard

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From: Salvatore Loreto <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2011 09:41:58 +0300

video, slides and audio in sync make the life a lot easier also when I 
had to check some part of the recorded session

-- 
Salvatore Loreto
www.sloreto.com

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From: Gonzalo Camarillo <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 12:53:09 +0300

Hi,

being able to replay the synchronized video/audio/slides/jabber after
the meeting seems particularly useful:

http://ietf.conf.meetecho.com/

For example, in the ALTO session, it is even possible to go directly to
a particular presentation. That is simply great.

During the meeting, being able to follow the slides locally on the
laptop was also useful, especially for people sitting far from the
screen. Also, in one meeting, the slides being projected were broken
because the chair was using a different system than the one used for
creating the slides (e.g., powerpoint vs. open office). Most people in
the room ended up following the slides in Meetecho :o)

For remote participants, the integration of the video, audio, slides,
and jabber in a single tool made it very easy to follow the meeting
remotely. The fact that the tool did not require any installation was a
big plus as well.

I did not see any remote participant calling in into the bridge to
participate in the meeting but given the short delays experienced by the
outgoing media, it would be possible to have real-time conversations
with remote participants (the system allows chairs to perform floor
control). Remote presentations would also be possible, although I did
not see any this time. However, I think someone was presenting remotely
in an interim meeting before Prague.

Something that was not tried this time AFAIK is to cover two sessions
taking place at the same time. Being able to follow what is going on in
a session in a different room would be useful. Today we do this with
jabber, but having the slides and video available in real time would help.

Cheers,

Gonzalo

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From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 06:59:25 -0700

> the meeting seems particularly useful:

while I think smil has reasonably well still the test of time, one of
the benchmarks for the utility of an archive is that the tools still
exist to play it back some years later.

I can still play back the mpeg2 files from ietf49, but it would take me
while to assemble the toolchain necessary to play back the rtp files
from earlier than that. so how it gets conserved with an eye towards
future use is important.

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From: Greg Shepherd <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 07:05:19 -0700

> from earlier than that. so how it gets conserved with an eye towards

How about a conversion to some standard form for archiving? If only
there were a standards body...

Greg

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From: Joel Jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 07:14:12 -0700

> there were a standards body...

I think you'll be able to play back on mpeg-2 program stream long after
the last vhs player  has died, that has as much to does with market
penetration of the playback technology as it does with the fact that
it's a standard.

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From: "Vijay K. Gurbani" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 09:18:56 -0500

> If you have experience with Meetecho, please share them on the vmeet

I think that the Meetecho is an excellent tool to have.

For a while now, I have been splicing the raw IETF audio file
into its constituent agenda items for working groups I chair or
participate in (see [1,2] for examples on how such an
integrated audio/slides/minutes page looks like).  While doing
this helps track the discussions closely after the IETF, this
is not scalable if one person is to splice audio files for
all WGs.

Meetecho solves that problem nicely.  In the ALTO WG, we
requested the Meetecho team to create individual spliced
streams corresponding to the individual agenda items.  The
result is as shown on http://ietf.conf.meetecho.com/

Assuming each chair chants the magic incantation to have
Meetecho create individual streams during the session, this
solution would be far more scalable than the one I am
currently using.

In the minutes for alto@IETF-80, we plan to put in the
minutes links to both the audio-only spliced recordings
and the Meetecho links.

The biggest disadvantage of Meetecho is the resultant file
size.  Because Meetecho records the video session as
well, the file sizes are necessarily large.  As a
matter of comparison, there is, on average, a 3x difference
in the file size of an individual alto WG session
audio-only stream versus the Meetecho stream for alto@IETF-80.

My private feedback to the Meetecho team has been to see
if they can only provide audio-only synchronized to the
slides.  Very few of us in the IETF are so good looking that
we project handsomely onto the small screen :-)

There are other minor inconveniences with Meetecho
such as the lack of universal support for HTML 5 in
browsers and the need to have the latest JVM installed.
However, the former will be mitigated with time and
the latter with an extra download.

I believe that what an individual IETF participant would
want after the IETF would be to: (a) if he/she attended the
IETF, refresh memory on the WG deliberations, (b) if he/she
did not attend the IETF meeting, catch up on what happened.
This can be done parsimoniously through audio only.  Audio
synchronized to slides is enough in these cases.
On the slight chance that video would be helpful (the ALTO
WG code demonstration is an example where video was helpful),
a video feed could be provided.  But in most of the cases,
audio synchronized to slides is adequate.

[1] http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/79/minutes/alto.html
[2] http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/78/minutes/sipcore.html

Thanks,

- vijay
-- 
Vijay K. Gurbani, Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent
1960 Lucent Lane, Rm. 9C-533, Naperville, Illinois 60566 (USA)
Email: vkg@{bell-labs.com,acm.org} / [email-masked]
Web:   http://ect.bell-labs.com/who/vkg/

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From: Greg Shepherd <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 07:20:54 -0700

> penetration of the playback technology as it does with the fact that

No doubt. My comment was directed at the pre and post mpeg-2 archives.

Greg