Re: [802SEC] Status on Whitespace Electronic Participation Experiment (Update 2)
I agree with and support Geoff and Ivan's observations.
I think that this mess should be stopped before we go any further down the
slippery slope.
Carl
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-stds-802-sec@ieee.org
> [mailto:owner-stds-802-sec@ieee.org] On Behalf Of Ivan Reede
> Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 2:11 PM
> To: Geoff Thompson
> Cc: STDS-802-SEC@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
> Subject: Re: [802SEC] Status on Whitespace Electronic
> Participation Experiment (Update 2)
>
> Geoff, I agree with you. As a presenter the remote was a
> major disctraction.
> While I showed thing with a laser pointer on the projector,
> obviously, I
> realized that the remote users were not seeing my pointer and
> could come to
> different conculsions. This was a serious difficulty. I saw
> this clearly
> through the content of the questions asked. I found that
> straw polls have to
> be re-done, an item I find totally unacceptable, as now, that
> means that
> people physically present which may not be present at the
> next electronic
> meeting may find thier vote voided by the meer fact the chair
> voided the
> straw poll result because the remote did not work.. so now,
> we have clear
> proof that people at the meeting may be penalized for remote
> people running
> into trouble.
>
> I also object to the fact that many people come to our
> meeting for the
> tutorial value... pay good money for this tutorial value
> which now comes for
> free... either you get an on-site observer's badge for free,
> with no voting
> rights and no presence accrual to atain voter status or
> remote user pay a
> significant fee... this free remote listen-in is basically
> unfair and I
> object to the whole process. I think the EC has to look into this and
> request any further experimentation be stopped until the EC
> has ruled. Alot
> of the on-site participants were preety frustrated at the
> whole process and
> the fact the "chair" usurped his position and alloe this to
> happen in the
> first place, without consulting the on-site members.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Geoff Thompson" <gthompso@NORTEL.COM>
> To: "Sherman, Matthew J. (US SSA)" <matthew.sherman@BAESYSTEMS.COM>
> Cc: <STDS-802-SEC@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG>
> Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 12:44 AM
> Subject: Re: [802SEC] Status on Whitespace Electronic Participation
> Experiment (Update 2)
>
>
> > Mat-
> >
> > My opinion remains.
> >
> > The best that can be hoped for with remote participation at
> this level of
> > tools is somewhat handicapped observation.
> >
> > Doing presentations from afar is pretty ineffective, if not
> hopeless in
> > terms of convincing a body of people in a room about
> something, much less
> > entering into a true interactive discussion.
> >
> > Geoff
> >
> > ===========================================================
> > At 08:48 PM 1/25/2009 , Sherman, Matthew J. (US SSA) wrote:
> > EC and Whitespace Members,
> >
> > I just wanted to give some feedback on the experiment. It
> closed out on
> > Thursday, but given my redeye flight and other commitments
> I haven't been
> > able to report out till now.
> >
> > Overall, Thursday wasn't much different then Wednesday. The basic
> > teleconference and webex presentation facilities worked
> well. Occasionally
> > people needed slight reminders to talk louder, etc. But it
> was very
> > workable.
> >
> > Things got a bit flustered when a participant made a couple
> of surprise
> > motions. Per prior agreement, the webex participants were
> not allowed to
> > vote. So we had traditional hand votes which went fine but
> required a
> > little explanation to the electronic participants.
> >
> > The one clear failure in the experiment was the polling
> facility. We
> > tried it Wednesday, and had operating difficulties. We
> tried it again
> > Thursday for strawpolls to collect data for the experiment.
> Again we were
> > caught by the need to change presenters and who was
> projecting, etc. It
> > is very cumbersome if you don't keep all that interaction
> on one machine.
> > We got farther along this time. We pre-prepared the
> polling questions,
> > and actually did launch the polls. Unfortunately the
> questions had not
> > been saved properly and there was an error in one of the
> questions. Also,
> > we invited all the in-room participants to take the
> stawpoll via the
> > webex. This did not work well at all. Some participants
> were still
> > unsure of how to get into the webex. Others started the
> process, but
> > required downloads that were going to take '40 minutes'.
> In the end, we
> > were only able to collect partial data, so I feel it better
> to just call
> > the poll invalid, and run the stawpolls again to collect
> the data. I will
> > give participants the option of doing it electronically on
> the next call,
> > or in written form.
> >
> > I will provide a more formal slide set to the EC for the
> March meetings.
> > My personal view is that electronic participation is very
> workable for
> > teleconference and presentations, but the polling facility
> needs no work.
> > I'd like to have an electronic voting capability at
> meetings anyway, so in
> > my opinion the next experiment should be to try out a web
> based voting
> > system that could be accessed from inside and outside of
> the meeting. I
> > don't think I have the time to purse this in the near future. I do
> > believe that any formal electronic participation at
> interims will require
> > payment of attendance fees, so we'd need to establish a way
> of doing that
> > as well. Obviously much more discussion is required prior
> to us formally
> > allowing this (if at all).
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> > Mat
> >
> > Matthew Sherman
> > Chair, IEEE802 Whitespace ECSG
> > BAE Systems - Network Systems (NS)
> > Office: +1 973.633.6344
> > Cell: +1 973.229.9520
> > email: matthew.sherman@baesystems.com
> > <mailto:matthew.sherman@baesystems.com>
> >
> > ________________________________
> >
> > From: Sherman, Matthew J. (US SSA)
> > Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2009 11:21 AM
> > To: WHITESPACE@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG; STDS-802-SEC@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
> > Subject: RE: Status on Whitespace Electronic Participation
> Experiment
> > (Update 1)
> >
> >
> >
> > EC and Whitespace Members:
> >
> >
> >
> > Here is a quick update on the Electronic Participation Experiment.
> > Yesterday was a smaller crowd. I estimate 60 in the room (there was
> > flux and not everyone registers attendance), and 16 on the
> webex. We
> > tried to run things less formally to see what would happen.
> There were
> > a couple of hiccups with one or two individuals on the
> teleconference
> > forgetting the established etiquettes and ultimately requiring
> > reminders. But it was not particularly disruptive. I
> would say most of
> > the meeting went smoothly. I felt it moved a little faster than the
> > prior day by that is very subjective and other might not agree.
> >
> >
> >
> > We completed our agenda a bit early and went to experiment with the
> > electronic stawpolls. We had a problem in that I had to be
> presenter
> > rather than Steve to compose the stawpolls. In retrospect I probably
> > should have ask Steve to compose them. When I did take
> control of the
> > presentations on my PC, I needed to project the screen for
> the room as
> > well, and that caused my screen format to change which
> prevented me from
> > finding some of the buttons I needed. So I couldn't set up the
> > stawpolls. Eventually I figured out that when I disconnect the
> > projector from my computer I can find all the right buttons
> and compose
> > the poll. By the time I got the poll composed, at least
> one individual
> > had gone to the mike and complained that this was a waste
> of people's
> > time and money. I don't recall if the person was referring to the
> > nature of the question being polled, or the general process
> itself (I
> > think he was mostly objecting to the question being polled).
> > Regardless, the polling did not go smoothly.
> >
> >
> >
> > We will attempt the polling process again today and be
> better prepared.
> > Yesterday was a good warm-up!
> >
> >
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> >
> >
> > Mat
> >
> >
> >
> > Matthew Sherman
> > Chair, IEEE802 Whitespace ECSG
> > BAE Systems - Network Systems (NS)
> > Office: +1 973.633.6344
> > Cell: +1 973.229.9520
> > email: matthew.sherman@baesystems.com
> > <mailto:matthew.sherman@baesystems.com>
> >
> > ________________________________
> >
> > From: Sherman, Matthew J. (US SSA)
> > [mailto:matthew.sherman@BAESYSTEMS.COM]
> > Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 12:58 AM
> > To: WHITESPACE@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG
> > Subject: [WHITESPACE] Status on Whitespace Electronic Participation
> > Experiment
> >
> >
> >
> > EC and Whitespace Members,
> >
> >
> >
> > The electronic participation experiment is not over yet. It will be
> > running for two more days but here are some early observations.
> >
> >
> >
> > Overall I felt one participant best summed it up saying 'it
> works, but
> > the pace is that of a large meeting with a couple of
> hundred people'. I
> > agreed with this opinion, but others may feel differently.
> We were able
> > to make study progress, but it felt like we were in a
> larger 802.11 or
> > 802.16 session. In actuality we had about 90 people in the
> room and 20
> > on the webex.
> >
> >
> >
> > The hybrid device which allows the phone line to couple to
> the PA system
> > and vice versa I feel is essential for any large in-person
> meeting. It
> > seems to generally work well. Installing it wasn't very
> difficult, but
> > I did need to request some cables from the hotels A/V staff
> to get it
> > plugged in. We had some initial leveling problems when we
> started the
> > meeting today. I believe these were all resolved within about 15
> > minutes and hope to have no start up issues when we start tomorrow.
> >
> >
> >
> > It was strongly recommended that we use Microphones with switches on
> > them. I did try everything out last night and requested
> the hotel staff
> > to switch out the mikes in the room (which had no switches)
> with mikes
> > that did. This was slightly problematic since they don't
> normally use
> > mikes with switches, but they eventually found a couple of
> older mikes
> > with switches that worked fine. In the end, we left the
> mikes on all
> > the time. There did not seem to be a need to switch them
> on and off.
> > But since different hotels will have different equipment,
> it might not
> > be a bad idea in general.
> >
> >
> >
> > Steve Shellhammer chaired the meeting, and I focused on
> making sure the
> > electronic participation ran as smoothly as possible.
> Unfortunately,
> > Steve and I weren't quite prepared enough. We had some connectivity
> > problems that had nothing to do with the experiment, and we had to
> > switch rolls a couple of times so I could present
> documents. This was a
> > bit awkward with us occasionally having the wrong screen
> projected, and
> > some dead time while we switched roles. It wasn't a show
> killer, but it
> > make for some slightly awkward moments. We understand the issues a
> > little better now, so we should be better prepared for tomorrow. My
> > take away was that we don't really need two people to run the show.
> > Rather we need one person with two screens. There is too
> much info to
> > monitor it all on a single screen, but it isn't really that bad to
> > monitor if you have two screens. I started monitoring both Steve's
> > screen and mine, and it didn't seem that hard to follow the
> > presentations and still monitor the webex. However, I only have one
> > screen on my computer right now (no one seems to have
> brought a spare
> > monitor) so I can't try running the show from a single computer.
> >
> >
> >
> > We did not get a chance to run any straw polls today, but we will
> > tomorrow. Also, the room we are in only has bandwidth (and seating)
> > provisioned for 75 people, and we were close to 100 at
> points. I wanted
> > to pull everyone in the room onto the webex to see what
> would happen to
> > the network but not everyone had access to the webex info,
> so we didn't
> > try. I will post it more widely for tomorrow.
> >
> >
> >
> > Overall, we had one presenter who was fully remote. While
> they couldn't
> > always get feedback from the crowd, overall I felt the
> presentation went
> > well. It was very interactive, with dialogue from both the
> floor and
> > the webex. We did some local presentations with
> substantial dialogue
> > across the webex and from the floor and that worked well
> too. Everyone
> > on the webex did a great job of sticking with the etiquettes we
> > established. We used the chat window to request the floor, and it
> > worked very well. A number of participants would send
> private messages
> > to me. This was a bit un-nerving since you wanted to
> respond privately
> > but were always a little concerned you'd accidently broadcast to
> > everyone. Not that anything really need to be private, so
> in generally
> > I'd encourage everyone to use the public chat and only send private
> > messages when absolutely necessary.
> >
> >
> >
> > So we aren't done yet, but we seemed to have survived the first day
> > okay. I'll provide incremental feedback as we go.
> >
> >
> >
> > Regards to all,
> >
> >
> >
> > Mat
> >
> >
> >
> > Matthew Sherman, Ph.D.
> > Engineering Fellow
> > BAE Systems - Network Systems (NS)
> > Office: +1 973.633.6344
> > Cell: +1 973.229.9520
> > email: matthew.sherman@baesystems.com
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ----------
> > This email is sent from the 802 Executive Committee email
> reflector. This
> > list is maintained by Listserv.
> >
> > ----------
> > This email is sent from the 802 Executive Committee email
> reflector. This
> > list is maintained by Listserv.
>
> ----------
> This email is sent from the 802 Executive Committee email
> reflector. This list is maintained by Listserv.
>
----------
This email is sent from the 802 Executive Committee email reflector. This list is maintained by Listserv.