On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 16:57:57 +0200
Marc Manthey <marc@xxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Oct 14, 2005, at 4:51 PM, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>
> > Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
> >
> >> In message <313680C9A886D511A06000204840E1CF0C885F67@whq-
> >> msgusr-02.pit.comms.ma
> >> rconi.com>, "Gray, Eric" writes:
> >>
> >>> Voice conference calls - however done - are bound to be
> >>> better than E-Mail, just as face to face is better than
> >>> voice.
> >>>
> >>> However, "I haven't been heard" phenomena are far from unique to
> >>> E-Mail and other text based communication and
> >>> can happen even with face-to-face communication. The difference
> >>> is that - with text based communication - it
> >>> is possible that what you've said will _eventually_ get
> >>> noticed...
> >>>
> >>>
> >> I suspect that conference calls will exacerbate language
> >> difficulties.
>
> when was that 1994 ?
> how about using sign language :-)
>
> > Not to mention being incompatible with working across all time zones.
>
>
> ....but this is just a question of timing :-)
>
> marc
>
In my experience, calls don't work well when
- the number of participants are >> 10
Somebody will have an echo, be in an airport, have dogs barking, their
call will drop off, etc. Even with 10 people, spending 5 minutes (8%)
of a 60 minute call dealing with such issues is pretty common, and I would
argue that this scales linearly with the number of participants. The sound quality as
tends to degrade with size, I would also argue ~ (N).
- There are participants from all of ({Europe or Africa}, the Americas, Asia).
- There is a lot of textual or graphic material to consider. (When someone starts reading long
sections of changed text in a telechat, I know it should be done on email.)
I don't know about you, but I expend a lot of political capital when I make long phone calls at
midnight. My wife has strong views about that sort of thing...
Also, calls do not "auto transcribe" the way that email does, and even IM has problems in that
regard. In addition, email lends itself to parallel processing in a way that calls don't, and even
IM can be problematic with. (I cannot really have > 2 simultaneous IM chat's going without ignoring
one or more.)
There is, however, some pretty cool group collaboration software out there (I like Elluminate
[www.elluminate.com] a lot, for example, and I don't know why the IETF doesn't use VRVS
[www.vrvs.org] already). A team to start making tests of this might be a good idea.
I think a decent question is, what is the trade-off between time and complexity ? The IETF WG's I am
in have time constants of order days, and so email is a pretty good choice. If they had to
make a decision within the hour, a telechat or video conference would be more appropriate.
Regards
Marshall
> --
> "Reality is what, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
> Failure is not an option. It is a privilege reserved for those who try."
>
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