RE: [Dmsp] The "intuitive" meaning of DMSP

"Ferrans James-JFERRAN1" <James.Ferrans@motorola.com> Mon, 31 July 2006 18:25 UTC

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Subject: RE: [Dmsp] The "intuitive" meaning of DMSP
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 14:24:55 -0400
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Hi Dave,

Your survey results are quite interesting!

I do agree completely with the need for a common vocabulary.  In the
early days of database systems one of ANSI's earliest steps was simply
to codify a common nomenclature.  (And my father-in-law once showed me
an early ANSI standard that simply named the parts of ordinary hammers!)

We shouldn't use "multimodal" without qualification, since there are
multimodal treatment regimens in medicine, and multimodal transport
(container) shipping systems.  "Multimodal interfaces" and "multimodal
interaction" are the terms most used in academe and industry.  For
example, the ACM has a yearly International Conference on Multimodal
Interfaces (http://www.acm.org/icmi/2006/), and the W3C has a Multimodal
Interaction Activity (http://www.w3.org/2002/mmi/).  

We should see if we can find a more descriptive name for marketing
purposes.


Jim Ferrans
Motorola Labs

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Crocker [mailto:dhc2@dcrocker.net] 
Sent: Monday, July 17, 2006 5:04 PM
To: Chris Cross
Cc: dmsp@ietf.org
Subject: [Dmsp] The "intuitive" meaning of DMSP

Chris, et al,

Chris Cross wrote:
> I agree whole heartedly with your assertion that we need to educate
the
> ietf but I disagree that changing the nomenclature is the way to go.
If

I am hoping that my actual words were a tad different from what you
heard.

My experience is that having two technical cultures attempt to
collaborate
requires "education" in *both* directions.  In fact I prefer to view is
more
interms of being a mutual "negotiation", not just for a solution, but
for the
basis that will be used to explore the problem space and the solution
space.
Each educating the other is certainly part of the effort, but the
mutuality of
the activity is key.

It is easy to view my focus on the name of the work as being nothing
more than
quibbling.  (I'm not saying that is what you are doing, but that it does
happen
and is easy to understand.) Please be assured that that is most
certainly not my
intent.

Since I view much of the hard work of standardization as figuring out
how to
communicate and agree to needs and benefits -- the technical work is far
from
minor, but oddly it is often the easiest part of the effort -- then I
think it
important to have title and descriptions that help those who are *not*
part of
the pre-existing, inside community.


> you google "multimodal" the first four hits and 8 of the first 10
refer
> to multimodal in the same way that we do.

The nature of the google algorithms means that this is a good way to
establish
that there really is a community of interest that uses the term
consistently.
Of course, that is helpful to know.

However my concern is about the nature and size of that established
community,
as compared against the increasingly larger community that you hope to
recruit
to this activity.  (As I mentioned privately, I see standardization as
developing an expanding spiral of community support for an effort.)

Does that larger population find the term intuitive or helpful?  To find
this
out requires a rather different methodology.

So I decided to do a small bit of survey research, today, to find out.
I sent
out a note to a variety of folk who have not contact with your effort,
although
by accident I did include one person who attended last week's BOF.
There is
nothing "random" about this sampling, of course, but I was careful to
seek
variety in their expertise.

Those surveyed are all quite senior in their work, ranging across
different
types of Internet protocol development, executive-level technical
management,
technical marketing, and even human-computer research.

See "Survey Request Note", below, for the text of what I sent.  I've
received 8
responses, so far.  The results are quite consistent. "Sampling of
Responses",
below, contains useful bits of text from the notes folks sent back.

The bottom line is that folks really do not understand what the term
means.
Some folks came close, but usually by accident or as one of several
guesses.
Note that even the BOF attendee is still confused!

So if you want to start including folks from outside the existing
community of
workers, we need a label that has more meaning.

While one might claim that the issue is merely one of teaching these
folks what
the current definition is, that would presume that their various,
pre-existing
views on the language are irrelevant.  My own view is that there is
significant
benefit in having a term that has more natural and obvious meaning, than
one
that begins by being ambiguous.



> "User Interface Streams" doesn't quite catch the idea. While there are
> streams involved, they are at a lower level in the "multimodal stack",
> generally in the VoIP implementation. Synchronization in multimodal

"generally in the VoIP implementation" suggests a particular focus on
VOIP.  If
that is, indeed, an essential part of the work, then it needs to be
stated
explicitly.  My own understanding is that the work is very much NOT
tailored to
a particular medium or mode.


> applications occur at the "dialog level", directly concerning the
event
> queues of User Agents. While multimodal synch has impact on the
> implementation of VoIP streams, that is an implementation detail.

Hmmm.

    User/System Dialog Event Synchronization?

(We need to be careful that the name does not sound like human-to-human
conversation, which would *really* be at the wrong level of the
stack...)

That's why the word "interface" is helpful, since "user interface" has a
clear
and consistent reference to the system component that conducts exchanges
with a
human user of the system. I've suggested user/system, above, just for
variation.

And let me stress that I have no concern for whether any names I suggest
be
adopted.  My concerns are that a) the current name does not help your
cause and
that any b) alternative that is chosen fix this.

My suggestions are merely... suggestions.


d/




SURVEY REQUEST NOTE
-------------------

> I am having a discussion about the terminology used, to label some
Internet
> protocol standardization work that is starting.  My concern is that
the label
> have a reasonable degree of intuitive (and correct) meaning for people
who are
> new to the activity. I believe this should include direct Internet
protocol
> designers, software engineers, technical managers, product marketing
staff, and
> industry reporters.
> 
> If you are willing to be a subject in an informal survey, please
respond by
> telling me what topic you believe the following label covers:
> 
>      Distributed Multimodal Synchronization Protocol
> 
> Thanks.



SAMPLING OF RESPONSES
---------------------

1.
>The term does not instantly convey anything recognizable to me. I spent
a few
seconds parsing the words and trying to imagine what might be meant.
"Multimodal?" I'm trying to imagine multiple modes. Hearing and seeing?
Multiple
forms of transport? Nothing is clicking. Sorry.
>
Alternate guess:
>
> [A colleague] and I have been sending email back and forth all day.
All of
> sudden I got a bounce message with an error I've never seen before and
which
> didn't make any sense.  I talked to him over Jabber to alert him and
then
> pasted in the bounce message so he could see it.  He acked and is
working on
> the problem.  I think this is an instance of distributed multimodal
> synchronization via an ad hoc protocol  ;)



2.
> It is a protocol that is distribued (e.g., no servers), works in many
modes
> (e.g., different network types and speeds) and synchronized data
between the
> participating nodes.   "Multimodal" is the least clear part to me.
> 
> Sounds like that database distribution part of a routing protocol.
Close?
>
> Second guess is some sort of extension to one of the sync protocols
(like OMA
> standardizes) to make it work better for different media types.


3.
> Dave -- Those terms are so general and so widely used I would not even
> venture a guess what it is meant to cover when you put them all
> together.


4.
> If someone asked me what "Distributed Multimodal Synchronization
Protocol"
> is, I would guess it is a protocol to synchronize data types/formats
used in
> various modes of communication (email, IM, SMS, VOP, XML?, etc.). I
would
> also guess the applications that use the data, and the actual data,
can be
> and are widely and broadly distributed. If my guesses so far are
correct, I
> would then assume one aspect the protocol would need to account for is
> synchronizing with data that is behind corporate firewalls.


5.
> I was at DMSP, but I have only a vague idea how the name relates to
the work they are doing.


6.
> I do multimodal work, that is, eyetracking and speech input, touch and
speech
> input, etc.  So my guess is that distributed multimodal
syncrhonization is a
> problem like what we faced in working with our eye tracker and MIT's
speech
> engine which had a time lag because of the internet delays that made
our
> efforts to build anything workable laughable.  And protocol, well
thats just
> people trying to agree on some standard that actually makes this all
work.
> 


7.
> Beats me.  When I see Multimodal I think of things like TOFC (trucks
on flat
> cars) so my assumption would be that it has something to do with
ensuring
> that the right truck drivers are there when the train arrives at the
yard or
> the ship arrives at the pier.


8.
> So, in laymans terms, suppose I have an address book or a database or 
> some other dynamic file that I want to be up-to-date on my cellphone, 
> my iPod, my laptop, my desktop and somehow in synch with data from
> YOUR address book or file. I can imagine a synch protocol to 
> accomplish this, I can imagine doing it over TCP, UPD, Bluetooth, 
> WiFi, FireWire, USB and so on. The synch protocol remains constant,
> the modes change, the speed changes and so on.
> 
> Is this at all what you are talking about??





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