Re: Recording teleconferences?

On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 11:54 PM, Dan Connolly<connolly@w3.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-08-14 at 15:13 +0200, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
>> On Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:08:24 +0200, Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org> wrote:
>> > I asked around internally. We don't have technical
>> > infrastructure in place to do this and implementing
>> > it seems to be non-trivial and lower priority than
>> > lots of other sysadmin projects.
>>
>> Thanks for figuring out! My idea was actually to simply record it via Skype and then publish it somehow.
>
> Well, then there are the social/policy questions.
> I have my reservations...
>
> A published recording changes the teleconference from
> a chat between colleagues into a performance for an
> audience of unknown size. I can imagine that being
> particularly daunting for people who aren't fluent
> in English.
>
> Written minutes strike a balance between
> recording everything and recording nothing.
> Well, good ones anyway; this group doesn't make binding
> decisions in teleconferences, so we tend to be
> pretty lax about minutes and expect technical arguments
> to be elucidated/replayed in email. As to non-technical stuff,
> I think it's reasonable that you have to be there in real time
> to get that stuff.
>
> Also, I gather the legal norm is explicit
> "this teleconference is recorded for public consumption"
> notice to all participants so that they can leave
> if they don't like the idea. Some teleconference
> services do this automatically, but we'd have to
> do it manually. Our current practice is to identify
> callers, but sometimes when somebody joins in the
> middle, we let it slide. We'd have to tighten that
> up.
>
> Adding an "if you don't like being recorded, your
> only option is to not participate in our teleconferences"
> constraint is a pretty big change to the way we work;
> some might even consider it a change to our charter;
> I'd need plenty of explicit buy-in from people who
> regularly participate in teleconferences and I'd have
> to give some thought to whether it's fair to people
> that the chairs might want to invite to a teleconference
> for a particular occasion.

I think these are pre-Web2.0 arguments, if you allow me to use this term. :-)

I agree there are limitations. I agree that everybody on the call
needs to know that the meeting is being recorded.

But I also think that the group should have nothing to hide and
whatever collegial conversations are being held, there should be
nothing to hide. Transparency should be the first duty of a standards
developing group IMHO.

And if there should really be segments that are not meant for public
consumption, the chairs could require the person who is recording to
cut out this piece. The meeting could even be organised in such a way
that the first minutes are spent on "internal affairs", but the
technical, policy, and procedural discussions relevant to the
community should be completely transparent.

Note that I am in Australia and attending a public-html meeting would
require me to be up at 2am, where I would certainly not be able to
contribute sensibly. There are certainly other people who cannot
easily participate, but are missing out on the exact discussions.

Also note that a collection of audio recordings of W3C HTML WG
meetings make for excellent testing material for the <audio> element!

Regards,
Silvia.

Received on Friday, 14 August 2009 14:11:57 UTC