Re: [vmeet] PLAN: Formulating a workplan for vMeet

["Brian Rosen" <[e-mail]>]

I've tried two ways of running a meeting with a mix of in person and WebEx
participants.

One way is that there is one computer, and it drives both the projector and
the WebEx client.  The "presenter" (person at the mic giving the
presentation) doesn't run the computer, the chair does.  This is not a great
solution, because if the chair needs to manipulate the meeting, the in room
attendees see what he is doing.

The other way is that there are two computers.  One is the chair's, it has a
WebEx client, running the slide presentation (using "share application").
The other computer is running a WebEx client, as a participant and drives
the projector.  That way, the people in the room see the same thing as a
remote participant.  

The latter works better IMO.

Brian

-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Otis [mailto:[e-mail]] 
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 3:50 PM
To: Brian Rosen
Cc: 'Henning Schulzrinne'; [e-mail]; [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [vmeet] PLAN: Formulating a workplan for vMeet


On Apr 20, 2009, at 10:02 AM, Brian Rosen wrote:

> Someone must have solved the audio problem we're looking at,  
> although it would not be the WebEx audio client.

Agreed.  The Meeting client is limited to 500 participants and does  
not support audio broadcasts.  However, the IETF already broadcasts  
the PA audio.

>  If not, we have work to do, but it's applied engineering and not  
> research.  It's a mix of in room, multiple mic, plus the remote  
> participants.  I've never seen it done well, but someone must have  
> solved the problems.

Don't think this will be much of an issue.  Need to work on developing  
utilities to allow remote participants to be heard within the room  
using a dedicated client.

> I'm not as enthused as you are to get chairs to run the WebEx  
> session.  I know when I'm running a meeting, it's nearly all I can  
> do to run the slides ("Next Slide Please") as well as do real  
> chairing.  It might be different if everyone was on WebEx, but when  
> you are chairing the live meeting, you don't look at the screen  
> much.  It's possible, but it's not great.

With WebEx, the presenters control their own sides and pass control.   
IMHO, WebEx should be continuously projected by a Net-Box attached to  
the projector.  There are standard brackets for attaching the Net-Box.

> I do think we ought to concentrate on the regular work group  
> meeting, and not deal with the plenaries yet.

A hybrid approach could handle both environments fairly well.    
Unfortunately, the Event client is somewhat OS limited at this time. :^(

>  That puts us within the kind of range we should easily be able to  
> handle with the tools we are discussing.  If we can get good WG  
> meeting tools, we can extend to good plenary tools.

Agreed.

-Doug