Re: Workshop and meeting requirements

On May 16, 2014, at 2:55 AM, David Singer <singer@mac.com> wrote:

> 
> On May 15, 2014, at 21:55 , Michael Champion (MS OPEN TECH) <Michael.Champion@microsoft.com> wrote:
> 
>>> proper teleconferencing hardware.  VIDEO conferencing, with screensharing
>> 
>> All this sounds good, but I wonder about affordability: What kind of capital investment, bandwidth requirement,  and on-side manpower requirements are we talking about to do a TPAC-size meeting with proper A/V? 
>> 
> 
> My experience is that video is expensive to do well and adds marginal value for remote participants.  A video of someone on a stage talking to his slides is simply not compelling.  
> If one could get immersive 3D surround video of the entire meeting, maybe it would be better, you’d have the sense of the audience and so on.  But…

I do not think it is fair to dismiss video by comparing some ideal utopian solution with the worst possible alternative, especially when the latter, as described, is in fact significantly worse than what is routinely used by many of us today. I routinely attend remote presentations using software that lets me see the speaker's slides or desktop on most of my screen, video in the corner and a chat area allowing me to interact with everyone in the room. It works very well, even with audiences spread across remote locations. This would at the very least suggest a wide spectrum of possible options and outcomes.

(Also note that a lot of W3C meeting work does not involve people presenting slides on a stage).

> 
> I think there is a lot more lower-hanging fruit than video.

I think that is true as well, but it does not mean that video should be considered in a mutually exclusive way. We need better tools, one of which is video.

> 
> Dave Singer
> 
> singer@mac.com
> 
>

Received on Friday, 16 May 2014 14:11:51 UTC