ietf
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: Beyond conflict

2005-10-14 08:53:24
On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 16:57:57 +0200
 Marc Manthey <marc(_at_)let(_dot_)de> wrote:

On Oct 14, 2005, at 4:51 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:

Steven M. Bellovin wrote:

In message <313680C9A886D511A06000204840E1CF0C885F67(_at_)whq- 
msgusr-02.pit.comms.ma
rconi.com>, "Gray, Eric" writes:

Voice conference calls - however done - are bound to be
better than E-Mail, just as face to face is better than
voice.

However, "I haven't been heard" phenomena are far from unique to  
E-Mail and other text based communication and
can happen even with face-to-face communication.  The difference  
is that - with text based communication - it
is possible that what you've said will _eventually_ get
noticed...


I suspect that conference calls will exacerbate language  
difficulties.

when was that 1994 ?
how about  using sign language  :-)

Not to mention being incompatible with working across all time zones.


....but this is just a question of  timing :-)

marc


In my experience, calls don't work well when

- the number of participants are >> 10

Somebody will have an echo, be in an airport, have dogs barking, their 
call will drop off, etc. Even with 10 people, spending 5 minutes (8%)
of a 60 minute call dealing with such issues is pretty common, and I would 
argue that this scales linearly with the number of participants. The sound 
quality as
tends to degrade with size, I  would also argue ~ (N).

- There are participants from all of ({Europe or Africa}, the Americas, Asia).

- There is a lot of textual or graphic material to consider. (When someone 
starts reading long
sections of changed text in  a telechat, I know it should be done on email.)
 
I don't know about you, but I expend a lot of political capital when I make 
long phone calls at
midnight. My wife has strong views about that sort of thing...

Also, calls do not "auto transcribe" the  way that email does, and even IM has 
problems in that
regard. In addition,  email lends itself to parallel processing in  a way that 
calls don't, and even
IM can be problematic with. (I cannot really have > 2 simultaneous IM chat's 
going without ignoring
one or more.)

There is, however, some pretty cool group collaboration software out there (I 
like Elluminate 
[www.elluminate.com] a lot, for example, and I don't know why the IETF doesn't 
use VRVS
[www.vrvs.org] already). A team to start making tests of this might be a good 
idea.

I think a decent question is, what is the trade-off between time and complexity 
? The IETF WG's I am
in have time constants of order days, and so email is a pretty good choice. If 
they had to
make a decision within the hour, a telechat or video conference would be more 
appropriate.

Regards
Marshall

-- 
"Reality is what, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
Failure is not an option. It is a privilege reserved for those who try."

Les Enfants Terribles
Les Enfants Terribles
C.V.O. Marc Manthey
Hildeboldplatz 1a
50672 Köln - Germany

main site: http://www.let.de
developer:http://www.cuseeme.de
http://www.applehelpers.com
my blog:http://brain.let.de

AIM ,MSN, MAC= macbroadcast





_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>