Ben and all,
I must completely agree with Ben on his point of Chat or IRC for this
sort of meetings. This is in part why I suggested back at the original
boston meeting I suggested that ben get in contact with some providers
for real time internet video or internet conferencing for remote participants.
And no Ben, RealNetworks just doesn't cut it!
Ben Edelman wrote:
> Greg wrote:
>
> > Perhaps, as a compromise, the Santiago conference can run as planned,
> > but those who attend (if connectivity permits) can use their computers
> > to interact with the online community.
>
> First of all, I want to note that the Berkman Center may not necessarily be
> involved with the Santiago meeting. ICANN hasn't yet asked us to provide
> technical meeting support there, and there may be scheduling issues also
> with some key staff. That said, the issues you raise are legitimate no
> matter who is running the meeting tech, so I'll proceed with general
> thoughts re your suggestions.
>
> An in-room real-time chat is something we've considered in the past and have
> been hesitant about for a couple reasons. In particular, one high priority
> of all our tech equipment is to avoid being unnecessarily distracting to the
> actual substantive work being done. So we adopt technology that seems more
> helpful than intrusive, and we stay away from anything that we're afraid
> will make concentrating on the work at hand more difficult. I don't know
> about the rest of you, but I'd have a lot of trouble listening to a speaker
> while trying to participate in a fast-paced real-time chat session. I'm not
> sure I want to ask anyone to do that -- and if we make that kind of chat
> available to anyone, I'm afraid many will feel obliged to participate in (or
> at least watch) the chat, thereby weakening the oral discussion.
>
> That an in-room computer-based real-time chat would be too distracting is
> indeed my primary concern. But there are others: The logistical nightmare
> of providing AC and ethernet to as many as a couple hundred users. (Now we
> know why the IETF uses wireless ethernet -- which I suppose would be
> possible too at some cost.) Tech support for those users who have trouble,
> though perhaps peer support would be sufficient. The need or "peer
> pressure" for meeting attendees to bring computers -- perhaps a significant
> burden on some (especially "locals," while those of us who tend to fly
> around the world presumably have access to lots of computing power).
>
> Call me old-fashioned, I think there's still something nice about an oral
> discussion -- back-and-forth questions and answers of the sort you hear for
> about half of each ICANN Open Meeting. I think of the tech as more of a
> support to the room meeting rather than a replacement for it. So, for
> example, I'm a big fan of real-time scribing -- it keeps the discussion
> focused, I've found, in addition to making the event easier to follow for
> non-native English speakers. But I'm concerned that a real-time chat
> involving in-room participants might just take too much of the assembled
> brainpower to take place in parallel with the current style of open
> meetings.
>
> > Would the Berkman center
> > consider using something like ichat, or perhaps open up the news site
> > to be writable for the duration of the conference?
>
> We could certainly do either. But realize that, assuming the open meetings
> maintain more or less the same format as has been the case in Singapore and
> Berlin, there's limited time for recognizing remote comments. In an eight
> hour meeting, there's perhaps 3 to 4 hours of Q&A. At best remote comments
> could get maybe a third of that, say ninety minutes to be generous. How
> long does it take to read a comment and respond? For some of the shorter
> comments that we got initially, maybe a minute each. Recognizing ninety
> remote comments in the course of the day would be great, I think. But then
> comments got both more lengthy and more numerous at the same time. (Average
> length of comments on the first day was 210 characters, then 394 on the
> second day, rising to 476 for the last forty or so messages.) They were
> good comments, mind you, but our architecture just wasn't setup to receive
> them that way -- reading a couple hundred words out loud is really very
> different than a couple sentences in terms of time requirements, meeting
> norms, etc. I know these issues are important, and I know also that there
> was some disappointment among remote participants that remote comments
> weren't being recognized more frequently. But to send *more* and *longer*
> comments in response actually only made the problem worse -- put us deeper
> into a bigger hole, so to speak.
>
> So my concern about a real-time chat taking place parallel to the meeting is
> that it would surely generate huge volumes of comments -- too much for the
> board and assembled group to read and discuss in the space of a day so
> packed with agenda items each more important than the last. If there were
> to be a simultaneous online chat, I think the expectation would have to be
> that chat messages are not presented to the board, while there would remain
> a separate interface for submitting messages more equivalent to coming to
> the microphone and taking for thirty seconds or a minute.
>
> What do people think of a separate real-time chat, presumably read that
> evening or the next day by everyone interested including the board? Or a
> separate threaded messaging system (yes, potentially hosted on our NNTP
> server) other than the real-time comment submission system? If the
> real-time chat is to be integrated with the meeting, how do you propose we
> do so given the constraints of the length of the meeting, limited computer
> availability, etc.?
>
> Ben Edelman
Regards,
--
Jeffrey A. Williams
CEO/DIR. Internet Network Eng/SR. Java/CORBA Development Eng.
Information Network Eng. Group. INEG. INC.
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Contact Number: 972-447-1894
Address: 5 East Kirkwood Blvd. Grapevine Texas 75208
