RE: Ongoing Experiments & Results

 

Larry:

 

Declaring OpenSource-only at this early juncture greatly cuts our field of focus.  There are 50+ solutions out there just in the videocon space – most are not OpenSource.  True too, most of them have computer-telephony-integration (CTI) which ranges from fair to poor to abysmal to farcical.  Home-based workers and learners really MUST have stronger CTI or many home workplace deployments will ultimately fail.  When was the last videocon you were in where someone did NOT make excuses for crappy audio?  

 

>>> The PSTN gives you a true shared audio workspace – many Videocon and dedicated VoiP solutions do not.  In other words, when I am speaking I cannot hear you and vice-versa.  Non-full-duplex audo is crappy audio.  

 

Good CTI is critical to home workers so by definition a “home workstation” MUST have great CTI.  But you cannot go down to Best Buy and ask for a home workstation.  Ca n’exist pas!!

 

It is sad, but true, that in 1983-85 I had better CTI on my home desktop (with Mitel Kontact CTI workstations) then I can buy today.  This whole field of a dedicated home workstation is undiscovered country.  By analogy, consider what jet-powered passenger airships might be like by now if the Luftschiff Zeppelin Hindenburg had not burned in 1937.

 

We can’t conjure up a home workstation overnight, but we can observe, consider, classify and then clearly delineate the importance of use cases where flawless CTI is an absolute necessity.  

 

>>> Nonetheless, I strongly suggest that we pay particular attention to the success of virtual working/learning solutions which do have strong CTI. 

 

Cheers, 

 

 

Daniel R. Perley

Workplace Technologies Corporation

 <mailto:dperley@mtc-stm.ca> dperley@mtc-stm.ca

 <http://www.wtc-us.com> www.wtc-us.com 

562-494-8782     main

909-883-6114     direct

714-253-6867     cell

714-474-7224     car

 





 

From: Larry Masinter [mailto:masinter@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Larry Masinter
Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2020 2:13 PM
To: 'Joseph Potvin'; public-covid-19@w3.org
Subject: RE: Ongoing Experiments & Results

 

I didn’t reply to your suggestion about restricting our scope to immediately usable open standards-implementing environments, preferably free/libre licensed.

 

I just see so many groups choosing non standards-based solutions because of platform compatibility, bandwidth limitations causing them to choose proprietary codecs or other technologies that the result (if it omitted any solution without there already being an open standard implementation) wouldn’t be generally useful.

 

 

 

From: Joseph Potvin <jpotvin@opman.ca> 
Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2020 7:01 AM
To: public-covid-19@w3.org
Subject: Ongoing Experiments & Results

 

Hi all, 

 

I have added the (blue) text below to the page that Larry started:  Going Remote: Current Practices <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WsiciPN3u6wy6U_FxCgMLyyF9YKx-oHhO7IJsCd-vOM/edit> . I also added a couple of comments about scope -- i.e. that this W3C group should not attempt to be a resource on all aspects of remote meetings/learning etc., but should restrict itself to immediately usable open standards-implementing environments, preferably free/libre licensed.

 

The instructor described below is my wife who is transitioning all her clients presently to online, and I'm her 'buddy system' support.  This afternoon I'll be assisting a candidate in a local municipal by-election to shift her entire campain to online engagement with citizens; and last night I was discussing steps with the CFO of an NHL hockey club. Discussions are also underway with an internal system manager for Shopify.

* An instructor has swiftly moved her usual in-person highly-interactive work to a fully online practice. She is using Jitsi https://meet.jit.si/ as the main platform (which includes screen-sharing and chat and other utilities) running in Chrome on one window panel, and Etherpad https://etherpad.org/ in Firefox or Safari running in another window panel for co-drafting with students. When stepping through a printed illustrated book, she obtains a clear image by using CamScanner https://www.camscanner.com/ on her phone prior to the session to quickly create a multi-page PDF, which she then emails to herself. In a second Firefox tab, she lets Gmail display the PDF, so that with screen-sharing running in Jitsi, she and the students can step through the book together.  
* The only delays during start-up result from some clients not being very familiar with readily available capabilities on their computers they either did not know about, or did not know the vocabulary for. This is being resolved via screen-sharing in Jitsi as well as client-side ‘buddies’ who do know the methods and vocabulary.

 


Joseph Potvin
Mobile: 819-593-5983