Subject: Fwd: experiences as a jabber scribe

From: Loa Andersson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2016 09:17:58 +0800

Folks,

I hope you have seen this mail from Mikael, useful info.

I would support taking 10 min out of the nex Chairs lunch to have the
demo/instruction Mikasel suggest.

/Loa

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: experiences as a jabber scribe
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2016 09:40:46 +0100 (CET)
From: Mikael Abrahamsson <[email-masked]>
Organization: People's Front Against WWW
To: [email-masked]

Hi,

I wrote a similar email after IETF96, so I thought I'd write one again 
after IETF97.

If I am attending the entire session, I typically volunteer as a jabber 
scribe. This helps me learn names (I have a problem with remembering names).

So I do this:

Sit down on the chair marked as "reserved for jabber scribe". Nowadays 
this is typically located to the right of the frontmost mic, which is a 
perfecet location.

Open my computer and in Chrome, turn off the sound in my computer, I 
open the Meetecho page for the session. This Meetecho session page 
contains a text window, a video feed of the slides, a video feed from 
the presenter (in the pink box!), and the sound from all the microphones 
in the room.

Meetecho page can be found on this URL:

https://www.ietf.org/meeting/97/remote-participation.html

The text window is "jabber" and just works without the typical hassle of 
getting Jabber working. So I just sit there and as people get to the 
mic, I look at their name tag, I then type "<Firstname Lastname> at mic" 
as they start speaking. If someone isn't wearing a name tag, I scold 
them. I typically encourage the minute taker to also have meetecho up, 
so they can see in real time the name of the person speaking, making 
their job easier. Lots of people speak their name very fast into the 
microphone and they also have spelling of names that is unfamiliar.

If someone writes something into jabber that I interpret they want 
relayed to the mic (or they explicitly say so), I go to mic and say what 
they wrote. Nowadays people can remotely ask the question themselves, so 
there is less relaying lately.

The end result is that on the Meetecho recording, you get a video feed 
of the slides, video feed from the presenters, sound from the session, 
and just as they speak, you get the name of the person speaking in the 
"chat" (jabber) window. I imagine this makes it very easy for the minute 
taker and chairs to later figure out who said what. It also means remote 
participation experience should be better in real time.

What not all people know is that Meetecho crew is "summoned" by typing 
something into jabber with the word Meetecho in it. So whenever the 
camera wasn't aimed at the correct place in the room, I would type 
"meetecho, please aim camera at presenter" and then 'magically' the 
camera would be re-aimed correctly in 10-30 seconds. Brilliant service.

Observations:

1. Some rooms have multiple microphones. This makes it a lot harder to 
be jabber scribe. I took to "disabling" microphones by turning them 
down, so people were forced to use the single microphone that was next 
to me. This makes it harder for people at the mic, but it makes it 
better/easier for remote participants, jabber scribe and the minute 
taker. I think this tradeoff is a good one. I would like to it see done 
by default. Most room only need a single microphone for attendees to ask 
questions or make statements.

2. A lot of people aren't aware of Meetecho and the layout of what 
Meetecho records/presents to the user. I would like to see especially WG 
chairs know and understand what Meetecho is nowadays. Lots seems to not 
be aware of the fact that Meetecho now contains "jabber". Something for 
the next Chair lunch to spend 5 minutes on? Meetecho is a brilliant tool 
to record our sessions in a single place that makes it easy to follow in 
real time and afterwards what happens/happened in the session.

3. Historically slide numbers have been called out on jabber. IETF96 
some people still did this, and I asked in each session if someone 
wanted this done. Nobody requested it. IETF97 I didn't even ask, and 
this wasn't done in any session I attended.

4. Previously there have been some minor hiccups with Meetecho and the 
room setup. At IETF97 I encouraged no problems at all apart from being 
disconnected from the wifi on one occasion (which isn't Meetechos 
fault). I would like to thank the Meetecho crew for such a excellent job 
and smoothly operated implementation.

Thanks also to the NOC team for the wireless access solution that worked 
excellently. I had very minor problems this time!

Thanks everybody who makes this possible!

-- 
Mikael Abrahamsson    email: [email-masked]

-- 

Loa Andersson                        email: [email-masked]
Senior MPLS Expert                          [email-masked]
Huawei Technologies (consultant)     phone: +46 739 81 21 64