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Re: Remote Participation Services

2013-02-07 11:07:49
Hi Thomas,

On 2/7/13 3:46 PM, Thomas Narten wrote:
It is good to document what we have been doing. But the text seems to
focus on technology and tools...

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.

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.


I appreciate this point of view, but at what point do we mean that a
face to face is really intended to be that?  That is- if you can get the
facilities going, great.  If not, let's recall how many people are on
the IETF payroll in this process, especially when it comes to interims. 
That having been said, I think it would be great to have a best
practices guide or checklist as you suggest.  Forgive me if this sounds,
crass- it's not intended to be– but sending some text to kick things off
would be very helpful.

Eliot