Re: Remote participation fees

[Tim Chown <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

> On 15 Feb 2015, at 16:19, James Gannon <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Speaking purely about the remote participation aspect, I think one of the issues is that yes there are full featured solutions out there (Adobe Connect for example as used in ICANN) but they can be complex and not cheap.
> The decision would need to be made whether remote participation is of a high enough priority to IETF to go after a full featured solution first, before then considering means of funding it. As Stephen says I think if remote participation fees are introduced without the remote experience to match it would not be a success.

So I don’t think there’s a one size fits all requirement here.

Who might want to participate remotely? The list may include:

a) people who have followed a mail list for a while and want to casually join a specific WG session at a meeting to get a feel for what a session is like
For this, streamed audio is probably fine, with some form of chatroom.
If a question is to be asked, it might be nice to be able to identify the person asking.

b) people who are very active in a WG, but can’t get to a given meeting, but needs high quality participation (along the lines Randy described earlier)
Here the ability to see slides, and perhaps to present, is likely to be needed. Reliable audio is more important.

c) perhaps a WG chair who can’t make a meeting, but would be willing timezone-permitting to chair remotely. 
Unless the solution for this is very good, we would want at least one chair present in person (because of the various administravia to deal with)
Needs are similar to (b), except a way to chat discretely with the co-chair would certainly be useful, and to see the room, and maybe to hear hums.

What other cases are there? How do we do a virtual Ted?

Then there’s the question of whether the participant is interested in just one WG, and thus minimal attendance, or attendance for multiple WGs in the week.

Perhaps charging is introduced for higher quality access (cases b, c), while casual ‘best effort’ remote participation is kept open and free (case a).

BTW a focus on the meeting room experience misses out on a big piece of value in attending - the corridor and bar room discussions.

Tim