Re: Remote participation

[Simon Pietro Romano <spromano@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

let me chime in on this. I’m copy-pasting below the “standard” message we send to each potential remote presenter:

Dear $PRESENTER,

you're getting this mail as the chairs indicated you will be presenting
remotely via Meetecho in $WG on $DAY. Please read the guidelines
provided here, as they provide instructions on how to proceed in order
to present remotely:

http://$SERVER.conf.meetecho.com/index.php/Remote_Participation

That said, the first thing to do is check whether or not WebRTC will
work for you, as it is mandatory for presenting remotely. We developed
a simple web page you can use to test this:

http://$SERVER.conf.meetecho.com/self-test/

so please use it and let us know about the results. 

You'll need a WebRTC compliant browser like Chrome or Firefox. It will
start an echo test that will try and capture your audio and video and
bounce them back to you: if you can see yourself in both boxes and hear
you back, it means that everything's fine. If not, please let us know
in advance, as fixing things during the session could disrupt the
natural flow of the meeting.

Please try this from where you'll do your presentation, and not from
somewhere else: e.g., if you're going to present from the office, don't
test at home, as network constraints may be different.

Please also remember to wear a headset, both during this test and when
presenting, to make sure there won't be any noise or echo when you
present remotely. Besides, it will make the test much easier as you'll
be immediately aware of the remote audio.

Let us know if you encounter any issue with this. See you online!

As you can see, we provide prospective presenters with a self-test facility which should allow them to properly check

whether or not they are in the right condition to make a remote presentation. This almost always works, as witnessed by the

5 presentations (plus 4 “injections” from the virtual queue) we had so far and which worked like a charm.

If you are referring, as I can figure out, to today’s CCAMP session, this was an unlucky case.

The remote presenter had made the test and he had indeed reported that he could not make any video (from his work location),

whereas he could do “good enough” audio, due to a slow (and firewalled) network connection.

My personal feeling is that we should avoid this kind of situations and perhaps ask the presenters to either find a better connection or

delegate some of the local participants, or simply throw in the towel. Though, I don’t think we (i.e., the Meetecho team) can take on the responsibility 

for this choice. That’s why we always keep WG chairs in the loop for all our e-mail exchanges with prospective remotees. 

If you believe we should adopt a different policy, just let us know. We’re obviously open to discussion and ready to take your savvy advice.

Thanks for your feedback!

Simon

On 02/nov/2015, at 08:30, Lou Berger <lberger@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

On November 2, 2015 4:18:15 PM "Adrian Farrel" <adrian@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Oh OK.
So there is a test for quality in advance, and if you fail the test you go right
ahead and present anyway?

Yes, at least that is my understanding of what happened in this case.

Is that possibly broken?

Not broken strictly speaking,  but it is a limitation or new requirement depending on how you look at it.

Lou

I asked the meetecho folks about the presentation that we both saw fail and
they said they saw the same issues during a test with the presentor.

Perhaps we also need a high loss tollerant codec available for such cases.
Of course the added latency is likely to make interaction cumbersome,  but
better than the complete failure we both witnessed -- where apparently the
presentor was told it wasn't join to work, but only had the option of
hoping his access link would (magically) improve. ..

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   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~o00~~(_)~~00o~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

                     Simon Pietro Romano

               Universita' di Napoli Federico II

                      Computer Engineering Department 

             Phone: +39 081 7683823 -- Fax: +39 081 7683816

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