ADMIN: remote access for 5th f2f (Manchester)

Dear All,

I just had a chat with Mike Daw who administers the access grid node
here at Manchester (I CCed him on this mail so he can correct me if I
I make any mistakes in the following).

The situation is that the most effective remote participation will be
achieved if everyone is at an access grid node, e.g., the node here
plus US east coast node(s) and US west coast node(s). It is also
possible to participate individually using e.g., VRVS [1], but this is
not encouraged as it can have an adverse effect on the whole
conference if individual participants have e.g. pour quality audio
without echo suppression.

We have 3 cameras here at Manchester, which is not too many given the
likely number of participants. We will, however, have the services of
an operator who can pan and zoom the cameras as necessary. This may
not be necessary for remote locations with fewer participants, but it
is obviously useful to have an expert on hand in case of any problems.

We will run a full test of the system on Wednesday 8th January so that
we are ready for the meeting on the 9th/10th. It will be helpful if
the remote participants can ASAP agree the nodes that they will use,
make bookings and forward the contact details of the node
administrators to Mike (at the above address) and to me.

We also need to know in advance if anyone wants to make presentations
using powerpoint etc. (so that we can distribute the necessary files)
or do anything beyond standard video conferencing.

Note that shared whiteboards are NOT standard equipment. We should
have a whiteboard here at Manchester that will be visible to other
participants, but they will also need to be at nodes with whiteboards
if we are to see what they are writing. Alternatively, we could run
VNC [2] (preferred) or NetMeeting in parallel, but we should again give
advanced notice of this intention.

I think that is everything for now. What we now need (ASAP) is
information from the remote participants as to their intended mode of
participation.

Regards,

Ian

[1] http://www.vrvs.org/
[2] http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/

Received on Monday, 16 September 2002 13:14:47 UTC