Re: [sidr] Interim Meeting (Apr 30, 2012) fallout/lessons/room-foo

[Samuel Weiler <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, 3 May 2012, Chris Morrow wrote:

> I'd also (and sandy as well) would like some feedback on this 
> message, the meeting, and suggestions for what a direction forward 
> might be.

I will observe that my support for having interims was conditioned on 
improving the remote participation experience[1].  I think we did not 
hit the bar on Monday.  In the absence of a concrete plan to make 
further progress, I feel I must withdraw my support for having 
interims.

Knowing one voice in opposition may not change the consensus call for 
having interims, I'm still going to try to make some constructive 
suggestions.

>  1) late start/technology fail with the webex (probably webex
>      operations failures more than anything - my fault)

I heard grumbling in the room in Reston re: having taken the trouble 
to travel there only to be faced with a seriously delayed WG meeting. 
There was talk of wandering off to another location to "get work 
done".  We may need to deeply consider the plan for what happens if we 
fail at making the tech work in the future.

>  2) audio issues (occasionally the webex audio would cut out)

I believe some people were using the WebEx "integrated" audio, and the 
source for that in Reston was not the speakerphone but was instead a 
single laptop's built-in microphone.  That audio was bad and, as you 
report, would frequently just stop entirely.  As best as I could tell, 
the integrated audio and PSTN call were not connected, and I'm not 
sure that anyone on the integrated channel could talk back to the 
room.

The PSTN audio outbound from Reston was decent, though not as good as 
I was hoping for.

>  3) local dial-in for webex-call for non-US participants

I don't recall seeing a toll-free number for the US.  Such would be 
helpful in the future.

I found Sandy's live notes to be very helpful.  They would have been 
better if I could have paged back through them on my own schedule and 
if they hadn't kept trying to take control of my screen.  Jabber 
worked fine.  For those in the room, I think having tables/desks would 
be more comfortable -- I don't like having my "laptop" on my lap for 
the duration of a normal WG meeting, and doing that for eight hours is 
too much.

As for future suggestions re: remote participation, I refer back to my 
note of 27 March: 
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/sidr/current/msg04288.html

I continue to believe that advance testing, delegation of the tech 
issues, and providing one microphone per person will help improve the 
experience.  There was a suggestion on Monday to use multiple jabber 
rooms: one with the (live) notes, and one for 
discussion/questions/etc.  Assuming we don't find a better shared 
note-taking tool, I'm fine with trying that.

Video seems like it might help with integrating the remote folks, 
though I have little experience doing video with large numbers of 
remote participants.

-- Sam


[1] http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/sidr/current/msg04268.html