(I do generally try to avoid high Narten scores, but...)
John C Klensin <john-ietf(_at_)jck(_dot_)com> wrote:
... but there is an issue that more and fancier protocols and/or
hardware doesn't solve, which is that running these things well
and at high quality tends to need serious operational commitments,
which means more staff.
There will be costs, but they _could_ be quite minimal:
One can reduce the staff requirement somewhat with _really_ fancy
and expensive technology, but the tradeoff may not be wonderful.
I'm not talking about the complex technical stuff here, I'm talking
about things closer to "camera gives good view of carpet" and
"if that speaker is going to pace the floor while talking,
either the camera needs to follow or someone needs to apply a
short leash"
These don't require on-site staff to notice, so probably these
could be _entirely_ covered by volunteers. Doing something about it
probably would require on-site staff -- but that's needed to make
the sound+picture useful to archive the session anyway...
to say nothing of the perennial microphone announcement, "MY NAME
IS <mumble>".
That's really no worse for remote participants.
Similarly, very high quality remote participation with lots of
participants at lots of different locations tends to either put
a premium on participant training and/or typing speed and/or a
requirement for trained moderators who can control both in-room
and remote conversation flow. Again, not really technical
issues, but not so easy to resolve, at least without cultural
changes.
Actually, there are many conferencing systems which already
have solutions to these problems. It's just a learning-curve
issue -- and so far we've avoided learning them.
... Again, be careful what you wish for, lest trying to optimize
for people attending face to face meetings while not requiring so
much travel, bring a situation in which almost all of the people
at a meeting in Region X are from Region X, almost all of those
at a meeting in Region Y are from Region Y, etc. That loss of
diversity in individual f2f meetings, even if it improved
statistical diversity over a year or two, would not, IMO, be a
desirable outcome.
+1
--
John Leslie <john(_at_)jlc(_dot_)net>