Re: [vmeet] Comments on today's vMeet webex session

[SM <[e-mail]>]

At 10:56 24-04-2009, Dave CROCKER wrote:
>A vigorous round of thanks to Eliot Lear for setting this up, as 
>well as patiently demonstrating and explaining Webex features.  As 
>he noted, he's not part of the Webex product team but rather is an 
>extended user.  I think this made his comments less canned and more 
>salient and maybe more candid.

Thanks to Eliot for the Webex demonstration.  As background 
information, I'll mention that I have used Webex to follow the 
plenary and small meetings.  I have also used Marratech for small meetings.

>It was noted that this was a strictly virtual meeting, with no 
>face-to-face room component.  Hence, it was felt that this probably 
>more like an online-only interim meeting than a face-to-face.  My 
>own reaction about this assessment is mixed:  Eliot noted that the 
>pattern of contribution actually matched some kinds of face-to-face 
>working group meetings, and I agree.  While it's certainly true that 
>a mixed f2f/remote meeting has its own dynamics, I think that this 
>all-virtual session felt quite a bit like smaller, collaborative f2f 
>wg meetings.

I agree with Eliot's assessment about the pattern of 
contribution.  In this meeting, most of the participants knew each 
other.  That influences the dynamics of the meeting.  There was 
little back room chatter during this meeting.

When we listen to audio, we cannot always tell who is speaking.  We 
had a visual cue during the meeting as all the participants were 
remote.  I did not have any problem following Dave and Eliot.  The 
audio was somewhat low for some of the participants but I could still 
understand what they were saying.  My phone call dropped around the 
90 minute mark.  It may be due to a time limit on the call 
duration.  During IETF meetings, I can usually refer to the Jabber as 
I get back and catch up with important points I missed.

I'll qualify the experiment as a success.  That's not always the case 
as I have experienced breaks in the audio feed or the Jabber going 
down when I follow meetings remotely.  Bandwidth on the local side 
was not an issue for this meeting but it can be when the audio feed 
is high bandwidth.

The loss of control over the workspace can be confusing at first.  If 
a participant is not familiar with the tool being used, he/she may 
feel like exploring it to find his/her way around.

I'll list some points:

  - the audio worked

  - I could tell who was speaking (map a voice to a name through the tool)

  - I could see the slides clearly and I did not have to identify 
which slide was being discussed.

I think that those are the basics for a virtual meeting.  For first 
time users, I suggest connecting earlier as setting up the (Java) 
software can take some time or you can encounter problems.

Regards,
-sm