Re: Recording teleconferences?

Dan Connolly 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...

Although I can see some benefits of recording teleconferences, I have 
the same reservations as have been expressed by Dan.

> 
> 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.

I think that before going further down the path we should decide whether 
a recording is a "performance" for arbitrary listeners (or HTML WG 
members).

> 
> Written minutes strike a balance between
> recording everything and recording nothing.

Indeed.

> 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.

And which personally, I would still expect - that minutes and/or voice 
recordings are not a substitute for technical arguments expressed in 
email directly by the person making the argument.

> As to non-technical stuff,
> I think it's reasonable that you have to be there in real time
> to get that stuff.

Indeed. And the question is again - are these recordings a public 
performance, or for the benefit of the members?

> 
> 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.

Yes, this would certainly constitute a serious change in how I would 
regard teleconferences in general.

Regards,

- johnk

Received on Friday, 14 August 2009 15:36:55 UTC