Remote Access for the 56th IETF meeting in San Francisco:
Text Conferencing
At each IETF meeting, two of the working group meeting rooms are equipped
for video multicast and remote participation. That is, for every IETF
meeting slot, two of the working groups can see and hear the
meeting. For the 56th IETF, in *addition* to the usual network A/V, text
conferencing will be provided for every working group that meets.
All of the conference rooms will be hosted on
conference.ietf.jabber.com
and each is named using the official IETF abbreviation found in the
agenda (e.g., "apparea", "dhc", "forces", and so on -- for all the
examples that follow, we'll use "foobar" as the abbreviation).
Each conference room also has a 'bot which records everything that gets
sent. So, the minute taker can review this information right after the
meeting.
1. Before the meeting:
1.1. If you want to participate
If you don't already have one, get yourself a Jabber client, here are some
suggestions:
platform suggestion
-------- ----------
win32 http://exodus.jabberstudio.org
'nix http://gabber.sf.net
macos http://jabberfox.sf.net
When you start the client for the first time, it will eventually ask if
you want to register on a public server. Go ahead and do
that.
If you want to find out more, instead of choosing these defaults, here
are pointers to some additional information:
list of clients: http://www.jabber.org/user/clientlist.php
howto: http://www.jabber.org/user/userguide/
server list: http://www.jabber.org/user/publicservers.php
To make sure everything is running ok, do a "Join Group Chat" with your
Jabber client:
Group/Room: plenary
Server: conference.ietf.jabber.com
This conference room is up and running right now (although probably no
one will be in it when you connect).
1.2. What the Chair does
If you want to make text conferencing available, you'll need to have a
volunteer scribe in the meeting room. The scribe will be typing in a
running commentary as to what's going on in the room (who's presenting,
what question is being asked, etc.)
So, why not send an email out on the mailing list now, before the
meeting, to ask for volunteers?
2. At the meeting
2.1. What the Chair does
When a session starts, the chair asks if someone in the room is willing
to act as "scribe". If no one volunteers, read no further, we're done!
Otherwise, the scribe should do a "Join Group Chat" with their Jabber
client, e.g.,
Group/Room: foobar
Server: conference.ietf.jabber.com
2.2. What the Scribe does
The scribe types in a running commentary as to what's going on in the
room. For example, if a speaker makes a presentation, the scribe types
in the URL for the presentation (more on this in a bit).
Simlarly, during question time, a remote participant can type a question
into the room and the scribe can pass it on to the speaker.
2.3. What each Presenter does
Each presenter should put a copy of their presentation on a web server
somewhere, so remote participants can follow along.
2.4. Where to find the conference log
http://www.jabber.com/chatbot/logs/conference.ietf.jabber.com/foobar/
NOTE: the logging facility will not be active until later this week...
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