Re: [802SEC] Status on Whitespace Electronic Participation Experiment (Update 2)
Bob -
I don't think the two situations are *at all* comparable, other than at the trivial level
of both involving the use of new technology. (And just for the record, I was in favour of
the use of LCD's; the technology introduction that I recall being most controversial was
the introduction of LANs at our meetings, and personally, I think the jury is still out on
whether that has improved the quality of our meetings, or whether it has simply allowed us
to while away the time doing solitaire or reading emails while we freeze our butts in
chilly meeting rooms).
The big difference with electronic participation is that, as you point out in your post,
it only works effectively (under some definition of effectively) if you reduce the whole
meeting to the lowest common denominator, i.e., handicap all of the participants with the
restrictions that the technology imposes. Otherwise, you create 2 classes of
participation, with all of the problems that that will inevitably involve. At that point,
you may as well abandon face to face meetings altogether and go entirely electronic; while
that may be attractive in the current economic climate, I believe it would considerably
reduce the quality of our meetings.
Regards,
Tony
-----Original Message-----
From: ***** IEEE 802 Executive Committee List ***** [mailto:STDS-802-SEC@ieee.org] On
Behalf Of Bob O'Hara
Sent: 27 January 2009 08:14
To: STDS-802-SEC@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
Subject: Re: [802SEC] Status on Whitespace Electronic Participation Experiment (Update 2)
This discussion gives me a curious sense of déjà vu. It seems that I heard many of these
same refrains when digital projectors were first being used in our meetings. There was a
lot of time wasted as presenters tried to get their computers to talk to the projectors.
Chairs and secretaries had to juggle things on their screens whenever they needed to use
the projector for a presentation. *sigh* I'm sure glad we decided not to adopt that
terrible technology in our meetings.
I think that the limitations of the electronic participation technology should be
recognized and that technology utilized for what it does best, allowing more people to
participate in the standardization process, making our process more open and transparent.
It accomplishes this by making it possible for people to at least observe the process
without the expense of travel and lodging required for in-person participation.
Using this technology might require a bit of, dare I say it, "change" by the people that
are physically present, e.g., all presenters must present through the electronic
participation software, using the pointing tools (no laser pointers) in the application so
that remote participants get the most information possible from the meeting. This begins
to familiarize everyone with the application, making use of it mostly as a "delivery-only"
mechanism. As more people become familiar with it, the tool will become second nature,
just like those infernal digital projectors.
The next steps would require some careful thought and planning, opening the feedback
channel from remote participants to allow for questions and comments and perfecting the
process for conducting straw polls of all participants (both physically present and
remote). Should this prove to be viable, it would seem that all the tools would be in
place for a completely virtual meeting, no longer discriminating between those in one
physical location and those in any other physical location. This final step would need
very careful consideration of what it means to be a "member" and how that membership is
defined, obtained, and retained. At that future point, the question of membership might
become "should membership be defined by the amount of time an individual spends numbing
their butt in a particular chilly conference room in a designated city, or should it be
defined by something more constructive to the process of developing a standard?".
It seems to me that opening our process to more participants would be a good thing, to be
sought out and worked on.
-Bob
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ***** IEEE 802 Executive Committee List ***** [mailto:STDS-802-
> SEC@ieee.org] On Behalf Of Tony Jeffree
> Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 11:20 PM
> To: STDS-802-SEC@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
> Subject: Re: [802SEC] Status on Whitespace Electronic Participation Experiment
> (Update 2)
>
> I agree. As far as I can tell, this experiment has simply confirmed to me that
> it is
> inappropriate to use a mix of electronic and F2F participation in the same
> meeting, other
> than in very limited circumstances.
>
> Regards,
> Tony
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ***** IEEE 802 Executive Committee List ***** [mailto:STDS-802-
> SEC@ieee.org] On
> Behalf Of Geoff Thompson
> Sent: 26 January 2009 05:44
> To: STDS-802-SEC@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
> Subject: Re: [802SEC] Status on Whitespace Electronic Participation Experiment
> (Update 2)
>
> Mat-
>
> My opinion remains.
>
> The best that can be hoped for with remote participation at this level of
> tools is somewhat handicapped observation.
>
> Doing presentations from afar is pretty ineffective, if not hopeless in
> terms of convincing a body of people in a room about something, much less
> entering into a true interactive discussion.
>
> Geoff
>
> ===========================================================
> At 08:48 PM 1/25/2009 , Sherman, Matthew J. (US SSA) wrote:
> EC and Whitespace Members,
>
> I just wanted to give some feedback on the experiment. It closed out on
> Thursday, but given my redeye flight and other commitments I haven't been
> able to report out till now.
>
> Overall, Thursday wasn't much different then Wednesday. The basic
> teleconference and webex presentation facilities worked well. Occasionally
> people needed slight reminders to talk louder, etc. But it was very workable.
>
> Things got a bit flustered when a participant made a couple of surprise
> motions. Per prior agreement, the webex participants were not allowed to
> vote. So we had traditional hand votes which went fine but required a
> little explanation to the electronic participants.
>
> The one clear failure in the experiment was the polling facility. We tried
> it Wednesday, and had operating difficulties. We tried it again Thursday
> for strawpolls to collect data for the experiment. Again we were caught by
> the need to change presenters and who was projecting, etc. It is very
> cumbersome if you don't keep all that interaction on one machine. We got
> farther along this time. We pre-prepared the polling questions, and
> actually did launch the polls. Unfortunately the questions had not been
> saved properly and there was an error in one of the questions. Also, we
> invited all the in-room participants to take the stawpoll via the
> webex. This did not work well at all. Some participants were still unsure
> of how to get into the webex. Others started the process, but required
> downloads that were going to take '40 minutes'. In the end, we were only
> able to collect partial data, so I feel it better to just call the poll
> invalid, and run the stawpolls again to collect the data. I will give
> participants the option of doing it electronically on the next call, or in
> written form.
>
> I will provide a more formal slide set to the EC for the March meetings. My
> personal view is that electronic participation is very workable for
> teleconference and presentations, but the polling facility needs no
> work. I'd like to have an electronic voting capability at meetings anyway,
> so in my opinion the next experiment should be to try out a web based
> voting system that could be accessed from inside and outside of the
> meeting. I don't think I have the time to purse this in the near
> future. I do believe that any formal electronic participation at interims
> will require payment of attendance fees, so we'd need to establish a way of
> doing that as well. Obviously much more discussion is required prior to us
> formally allowing this (if at all).
>
> Best regards,
>
> Mat
>
> Matthew Sherman
> Chair, IEEE802 Whitespace ECSG
> BAE Systems - Network Systems (NS)
> Office: +1 973.633.6344
> Cell: +1 973.229.9520
> email: matthew.sherman@baesystems.com
> <mailto:matthew.sherman@baesystems.com>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Sherman, Matthew J. (US SSA)
> Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2009 11:21 AM
> To: WHITESPACE@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG; STDS-802-SEC@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
> Subject: RE: Status on Whitespace Electronic Participation Experiment
> (Update 1)
>
>
>
> EC and Whitespace Members:
>
>
>
> Here is a quick update on the Electronic Participation Experiment.
> Yesterday was a smaller crowd. I estimate 60 in the room (there was
> flux and not everyone registers attendance), and 16 on the webex. We
> tried to run things less formally to see what would happen. There were
> a couple of hiccups with one or two individuals on the teleconference
> forgetting the established etiquettes and ultimately requiring
> reminders. But it was not particularly disruptive. I would say most of
> the meeting went smoothly. I felt it moved a little faster than the
> prior day by that is very subjective and other might not agree.
>
>
>
> We completed our agenda a bit early and went to experiment with the
> electronic stawpolls. We had a problem in that I had to be presenter
> rather than Steve to compose the stawpolls. In retrospect I probably
> should have ask Steve to compose them. When I did take control of the
> presentations on my PC, I needed to project the screen for the room as
> well, and that caused my screen format to change which prevented me from
> finding some of the buttons I needed. So I couldn't set up the
> stawpolls. Eventually I figured out that when I disconnect the
> projector from my computer I can find all the right buttons and compose
> the poll. By the time I got the poll composed, at least one individual
> had gone to the mike and complained that this was a waste of people's
> time and money. I don't recall if the person was referring to the
> nature of the question being polled, or the general process itself (I
> think he was mostly objecting to the question being polled).
> Regardless, the polling did not go smoothly.
>
>
>
> We will attempt the polling process again today and be better prepared.
> Yesterday was a good warm-up!
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> Mat
>
>
>
> Matthew Sherman
> Chair, IEEE802 Whitespace ECSG
> BAE Systems - Network Systems (NS)
> Office: +1 973.633.6344
> Cell: +1 973.229.9520
> email: matthew.sherman@baesystems.com
> <mailto:matthew.sherman@baesystems.com>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Sherman, Matthew J. (US SSA)
> [mailto:matthew.sherman@BAESYSTEMS.COM]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 12:58 AM
> To: WHITESPACE@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
> Subject: [WHITESPACE] Status on Whitespace Electronic Participation
> Experiment
>
>
>
> EC and Whitespace Members,
>
>
>
> The electronic participation experiment is not over yet. It will be
> running for two more days but here are some early observations.
>
>
>
> Overall I felt one participant best summed it up saying 'it works, but
> the pace is that of a large meeting with a couple of hundred people'. I
> agreed with this opinion, but others may feel differently. We were able
> to make study progress, but it felt like we were in a larger 802.11 or
> 802.16 session. In actuality we had about 90 people in the room and 20
> on the webex.
>
>
>
> The hybrid device which allows the phone line to couple to the PA system
> and vice versa I feel is essential for any large in-person meeting. It
> seems to generally work well. Installing it wasn't very difficult, but
> I did need to request some cables from the hotels A/V staff to get it
> plugged in. We had some initial leveling problems when we started the
> meeting today. I believe these were all resolved within about 15
> minutes and hope to have no start up issues when we start tomorrow.
>
>
>
> It was strongly recommended that we use Microphones with switches on
> them. I did try everything out last night and requested the hotel staff
> to switch out the mikes in the room (which had no switches) with mikes
> that did. This was slightly problematic since they don't normally use
> mikes with switches, but they eventually found a couple of older mikes
> with switches that worked fine. In the end, we left the mikes on all
> the time. There did not seem to be a need to switch them on and off.
> But since different hotels will have different equipment, it might not
> be a bad idea in general.
>
>
>
> Steve Shellhammer chaired the meeting, and I focused on making sure the
> electronic participation ran as smoothly as possible. Unfortunately,
> Steve and I weren't quite prepared enough. We had some connectivity
> problems that had nothing to do with the experiment, and we had to
> switch rolls a couple of times so I could present documents. This was a
> bit awkward with us occasionally having the wrong screen projected, and
> some dead time while we switched roles. It wasn't a show killer, but it
> make for some slightly awkward moments. We understand the issues a
> little better now, so we should be better prepared for tomorrow. My
> take away was that we don't really need two people to run the show.
> Rather we need one person with two screens. There is too much info to
> monitor it all on a single screen, but it isn't really that bad to
> monitor if you have two screens. I started monitoring both Steve's
> screen and mine, and it didn't seem that hard to follow the
> presentations and still monitor the webex. However, I only have one
> screen on my computer right now (no one seems to have brought a spare
> monitor) so I can't try running the show from a single computer.
>
>
>
> We did not get a chance to run any straw polls today, but we will
> tomorrow. Also, the room we are in only has bandwidth (and seating)
> provisioned for 75 people, and we were close to 100 at points. I wanted
> to pull everyone in the room onto the webex to see what would happen to
> the network but not everyone had access to the webex info, so we didn't
> try. I will post it more widely for tomorrow.
>
>
>
> Overall, we had one presenter who was fully remote. While they couldn't
> always get feedback from the crowd, overall I felt the presentation went
> well. It was very interactive, with dialogue from both the floor and
> the webex. We did some local presentations with substantial dialogue
> across the webex and from the floor and that worked well too. Everyone
> on the webex did a great job of sticking with the etiquettes we
> established. We used the chat window to request the floor, and it
> worked very well. A number of participants would send private messages
> to me. This was a bit un-nerving since you wanted to respond privately
> but were always a little concerned you'd accidently broadcast to
> everyone. Not that anything really need to be private, so in generally
> I'd encourage everyone to use the public chat and only send private
> messages when absolutely necessary.
>
>
>
> So we aren't done yet, but we seemed to have survived the first day
> okay. I'll provide incremental feedback as we go.
>
>
>
> Regards to all,
>
>
>
> Mat
>
>
>
> Matthew Sherman, Ph.D.
> Engineering Fellow
> BAE Systems - Network Systems (NS)
> Office: +1 973.633.6344
> Cell: +1 973.229.9520
> email: matthew.sherman@baesystems.com
>
>
>
>
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