On Jul 11, 2013, at 1:50 PM, Brian E Carpenter
<brian(_dot_)e(_dot_)carpenter(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:
Douglas,
...
Those traveling thousands of miles already confront many uncertainties.
Those that elect to participate remotely should be afforded greater
certainty of being able to participate when problems occur at local venues
or with transportation. Increasing participation without the expense of
the brick and mortar and travel should offer long term benefits and
increased fairness.
How much would you be willing to pay for remote participation
(assuming it was of high quality)?
$600 for the week (cookies and taxes not included)?
Dear Brian,
A $600 price would represent a significant savings for most participants
traveling large distances and using hotels. If remote participants were given
a first class status, such that even when physical venues lost Internet access,
meetings continued. The number of overall participants should increase and
have the effect of demanding much lower meeting fees.
I suspect this will require abandoning the use of unmoderated inbound access to
audio channels. This has not worked very well. Echo cancelation, noise, and
disruption is likely too problematic as well as resource intensive. Whatever
is used must be rock solid.
The IETF already supports a hallway channel. When the goal is to sell products
or services, face-to-face becomes far more important. There are many other
organizations better at playing that role. I have also experienced these
face-to-face meetings many times being used to subvert ongoing efforts.
Strictly moderated and fully recorded meetings hold a greater promise of
providing fairness.
Imagine XMPP as a control channel for moderators in conjunction with meeting
channels that automatically recognize requests to speak. The meeting agenda
should already indicate who is to speak, with their presentations available
before the beginning of the meetings. Nothing could be done without
everything being recorded and available remotely.
Regards,
Douglas Otis