--On Wednesday, November 7, 2018 14:46 -0500 Sandra Murphy
<sandy@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Overall comment. Meetecho is a wonderful marvelous tool, the
> staff is fantastically helpful, all quite an uptick from the
> jabber+audio experience of long ago IETFs. Long life to them!
Strongly agree. I'm afraid I haven't been saying that often
enough lately and apologize for not doing so. I also think we
have reached the point were the vast majority of the problems we
have "with Meetecho" are IETF participant issues involving
training, lack of attention, etc.
> But.
>
> Are we mandating the use of meetecho for remote participation?
> Are those who still use jabber+audio just out of luck?
I hope not. At the same time, I see a difference between
relatively passive remote participation in which someone
observes, tracks documents, participates on the mailing list,
makes an occasional comment in a WG meeting, etc., and really
active participation in which someone might be editing WG
documents, taking one leadership roles such as WG co-chair or
secretary, participating in complex directorate discussions, and
so on. If we needed to require that someone either be f2f or
have enough technology and technology available to run Meetecho,
I, at least, wouldn't be enthused but wouldn't lose a lot of
sleep over it either.
> About
>
>> A feasible approach to removing such a latency is indeed
>> represented by the use of the Meetecho virtual queue. In this
>> way, remote participants can in fact directly inject (in a
>> chair-moderated fashion) their audio (and video, if desired)
>> into the conference room, with no need for any "jabber
>> relay".
>
> In what way does the virtual queue counteract the time it
> takes for the "any questions" to reach my platform before
> the "no? ok, on to next topic" occurs in the meeting room?
Simon may have a different answer, but what I'm noticed is that
it takes me a while to compose a question that will be coherent
and clear enough when read at the microphone by someone else and
possibly out of sequence with the conversation. By contrast, I
can click on the "put me in queue" icon in real time and finish
composing my question the same way I do when I get in the mic
line, i.e., while waiting to get to the front of the queue. As
with standing in the physical line, if I change my mind about
saying something before I get to the front of the queue, it is
easy for me to get out of line sit down (physically or
virtually).
> 'T'would indeed be great to inject my audio and maybe
> video into the room. Save me the typing which always takes me
> much too long.
And that is exactly the point above. The Jabber input
mechanism is much more suited for quick comments than for
detailed ones and far too ponderous for anything resembling a
bac-and-forth discussion (which I've had using Meetecho
facilities)
> But.
>
> See overall comment on jabber+audio.
>
> Not all people are remotely participating in situations where
> they can speak out loud. What, no one has ever been sitting
> in one wg, with one ear and a jabber window devoted to the wg
> in another room?
See above. And, having done that, if I conclude that I need to
actively participate in a discussion in a different WG, I get up
and change rooms.
>> The Meetecho queue might have done the trick also in this
>> case, by the way.
>
> The chair who did not see the jabber/chat room might just as
> easily not seen the virtual queue. Gotta have somebody in the
> room to be looking, whether it is looking for the "MIC
> <comment>" in the jabber room or looking for the "virtual
> queue, which is projected at all times".
Unless one has an alert mechanism that is capable of getting
increasingly intrusive and obnoxious if it were ignored... just
as someone in an in-room mic queue has options other than
standing their passively if not recognized. We would hope those
options would never be used, but I've been around long enough to
see a few of them and you probably have too.
> Whether that's
> one somebody with an assigned role or a community effort.
>
> (I await education of a current tool feature that puts the
> audio from the virtual queue directly into the room at some
> deliberate point without human direction. But you did say "in
> a chair-moderated fashion".)
In-room microphone queues are also chair-moderated. I'd be
really happy if we could get to parity.
>> I might be biased, but my feeling is that we, as a
>> community, have devoted huge efforts in the past years to
>> improve the "quality" of the remote participation
>> experience
>
> I repeat my first enthusiastic gratitude to the work that has
> been done. I agree with the improvement wholeheartedly.
>
> But.
>
> Humans, AFAIK, still have a determining factor in making the
> remote participation work well.
Again, I see most of the issues at this point as having to do
with effective meeting management that gives adequate
consideration to remote participants and fairness toward them,
not deficiencies in Meetecho.
john
