Le 2013-02-07 à 09:46, Thomas Narten a écrit :
It is good to document what we have been doing. But the text seems to
focus on technology and tools…
I agree and disagree.
IMO, what is missing is operational Best Practices. We seem to be
lacking them (are any written down?) And we don't follow them
consistently, especially from one WG to another. Many of the problems
I see with remote participation facilties have to do not with the
technology per se, but with lack of proper training and advance
testing. I get the general sense that getting the remote stuff to work
is a volunteer effort where each person tries it themselves with no
checklist of obvious things to do in advance, and no recourse if no
one in the room can get something working.
right. I for one had chaired a few working groups where the main contributors
(and therefore presenters) were not on-site. I spent a significant amount of
time in preparation, testing, etc… with the great help of Joel Jaeggli
borrowing me the right cables. For most time, it worked. Sometimes it did not
work well. And given that the meeting rooms are all occupied, it is very
difficult to test a lot in advance, so I did in off hours, such as during lunch
doing sound checks while an informal meeting was taking place and I was
disturbing, but my chairing was the first session after lunch.
In summary, currently, bi-directionnal audio is not well supported (no
criticism intended, just a fact), which does not help in having remote
participation, specially for speakers. So technology and tools, well tested,
in production, supported, would help a lot, at least in the use cases I've been
involved.
Having said that, your point of best practices is also relevant.
And also wg chairs doing more prep in advance of their meeting, unless we have
paid support staff to take care of these.
Marc.
E.g., I was at an interim meeting last fall, where it looked like when
the meeting started, that was the the first that folk actually looked
at the facilities in the room (phone, microphones, etc.) to see how
best to allow remote participants to speak. The quick conclusion was
"can't be done". This should have been worked out (and tested) in
advance, not at the start of the meeting.
Thomas