- From: Peter F. Patel-Schneider <pfps@research.bell-labs.com>
- Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2002 09:25:50 -0400 (EDT)
- To: dlm@KSL.Stanford.EDU
- Cc: welty@us.ibm.com, www-webont-wg@w3.org
From: Deborah McGuinness <dlm@KSL.Stanford.EDU> Subject: Re: 5th and 6th f2f locations Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 23:19:30 -0700 [...] > In the spirit of compromise, let me provide a few data points that I have > participated in large meetings via videolink (from stanford's video > teleconferencing facility) that have worked well, small meetings via video as > well (via stanford's facility as well as kinko's). Kinko's was extremely > professional and very effective. > Also we have used white board pens effectively for remote work. > with a good speakerphone, irc, wireless lan, and some way to see a white board > (pens or video), > I think this could work well. [...] I too have had experience in video conferencing. I find them uniformly less productive than a face-to-face meeting. The only situation that I have experienced where video conferencing comes close to the productivity of a face-to-face meeting is where the meeting consists almost entirely of long presentations, with only limited questions of the speaker. If the meeting is small and well-run (like a staff meeting) then video conferencing is noticeably worse than a face-to-face meeting, but not too far off. However, if the meeting has a significant number of participants, many of the participants will be presenting, discussion is expected to be free-form, and the group may break up into smaller groups, a standard video conference is dramatically less efficient than a face-to-face meeting. As I would hope that our 5th meeting will have all of these aspects, I would vote against having a split meeting with standard videoconferencing services. The above comments do not apply for an advanced videoconferencing setup, where arbitrary subgroups can set up separate videoconferencing channels, including shared marking spaces. I have no experience with such setups and thus have no idea of their effectiveness. Peter F. Patel-Schneider Bell Labs Research
Received on Thursday, 29 August 2002 09:26:02 UTC