Re: participation sans meeting attendance (was RE: Alternative formats for IDs)

[Melinda Shore <mshore at cisco.com>]

I've been participating in the last few meetings from home,
and when things go smoothly it's been very, very good.  However,
in a few cases it's been either difficult or impossible to
follow what's going on in a room, let alone send in comments
or questions.

Here's a first pass at a list of recommendations to make things
easier for remote attendance:

1) Make sure the chairs and speakers are miked.  This one seems
   obvious but frequently, during exchanges between the floor and
   the chairs or speakers, there's an assumption that if someone
   in the front of the room shouts loudly enough they can be heard
   in the back.  That's very likely true, but it doesn't mean they
   can be heard on the audio feed.

2) Make sure that the mike for the audio feed can pick up what's
   going on.  Again, this seems obvious but in several working
   groups at the last meeting the entire session was inaudible

3) Make sure that questions are asked at a microphone, and that
   questioners/speakers identify themselves

4) Having slides available before the meeting is a nice thing

5) Jabber is not just for recording what's going on in the room.
   It's also the primary mechanism for people not in the room to
   ask questions or make comments, and so even if a Jabber scribe
   is not available it's a good idea to have someone keeping an
   eye on the chatroom and who's willing to relay questions.

6) If you can't find scribes for both meeting minutes and
   Jabber chatrooms, consider having the minute-taker type
   his or her notes into the Jabber window and using the transcript
   as the basis for minutes.

7) Don't forget about the remote participants when taking
   straw polls to get the sense of the "room", etc.

Melinda