--On Sunday, July 26, 2015 8:38 AM -0400 Victor Kuarsingh
<victor(_at_)jvknet(_dot_)com> wrote:
On 2015-07-24 6:23 AM, Adrian Farrel wrote:
A proposal...
Could Meetecho please just zoom out.
This seems reasonable. Since many audience members (local)
don't sit in the front of the room anyway, what about camera
positioning which simulates more like being in the audience
(may need to be on the side as to not be obstructed during
discussion time). This wider angle view will then allow for
simultaneous viewing (from afar) of the speaker, chairs and if
we are lucky commenters at mic.
I think it's nice to see the speaker up close, but monitoring
the overall interaction of the meeting may be more useful.
Sigh. I don't know how many of those suggesting things like
"zoom out" have actually been participating remotely of late,
but I complained to the Meetecho folks at the beginning of the
week that the images coming from the cameras were too small,
even on a screen much too large to carry around, to be of any
real use or even to allow recognizing the speaker (and, easy
though it should be, we are still, on average, doing a lousy job
of speaker name announcements). Given the size of that image
(under roughly 6 cm when Meetecho is maximimzed on a nominal 24
inch screen; lots smaller when it is not maximized or the screen
is smaller), it is hard to identify a speaker. Zooming out to
the point of "monitoring the overall interaction of the meeting"
could make the picture amusing but it would be completely
useless for speaker identification, seeing facial expressions,
etc. It would be so useless that, IMO, it would be better to
save resources, dispense with the cameras, and use the screen
real estate for something else -- options I definitely do not
recommend because the video of speakers, when it works, _is_
useful.
john (as somewhat frustrated remote participant)
p.s. Dear Nomcom: I am coming to believe that, if the IETF is
going to claim to be serious about remote participation, a
criterion for any appointment to the IESG or IAOC, and maybe the
IAB, should be having participated remotely at least once in
recent years. Eating dogfood and all that but, more important,
getting a firsthand sense of what the IETF is like for those who
do not attend every meeting with salaries and travel expenses
paid and on expense accounts.