On 05/08/2013 06:54, Ted Lemon wrote:
While I think getting slides in on time is great for a lot of reasons,
reading the slides early isn't that important. What is important is that
remote people see the slides at the same time as local people. For that, it
seems to me that Meetecho support does exactly what is needed. You just
follow the slideshow online, along with the audio.
Of course, in order to have Meetecho support, you need the slides in advance
of the meeting, preferably far enough in advance that it doesn't create a
massive hassle for the Meetecho team. But by making Meetecho the place where
the slides are presented, you ensure that everybody is on an equal footing,
without engaging in punitive behavior.
The main reason to want to see the slides in advance is so that the working
group chairs can evaluate them to see if they will actually be a good use of
time. But that's completely orthogonal to the remote participation issue.
For remote attendees, there is a distinct advantage in having time to
download & store slides in advance. There are still plenty of places
where real-time bandwidth is an issue and audio and jabber may be
all you can get.
There is another equally important reason for having them well in advance,
for both on-site and remote attendees: so that participants can review
them in advance, decide which of several clashing sessions to attend, and
even prepare questions. This applies even if the slides summarise a draft
that was available two or three weeks in advance. Things are often
expressed differently in the slides.
Finally: a deadline one week before the meeting is no harder to meet
than one minute before the meeting. If it's a zero-tolerance deadline,
people will meet it.
Brian