[wsfii-discuss] Live video conference - for real?

[Saul Albert]

On Mon, Sep 25, 2006 at 12:28:28AM +0200, kdag wrote:
> >We could work on the wiki on this project at:
> >http://summit.airjaldi.com/wiki/index.php?title=GISS.Stream.Ring
> 
> i will try to answers all thse questions in the wiki and invite other
> GISS conspirers to join in and give a hand.

Excellent! Thanks Alejo, all. I'll do my best to help wiki-gardening
too. We (theps.net) also have an icecast 2 server enabled for ogg theora
in colo in Germany that I'm happy to add to the ring :) I'll
investigate how and document it further if I can..

Thanks for all those answers anyway - that's a really great start.

> >> - I think there are lots of other questions - such as how to integrate
> >>  irc chat with streaming,
> 
> this same weekend the people from sinantena used a web interface that
> apart from having the video screen embedded in the page, had also a
> chat interface. this is a new service that will add a lot of good
> feedback to the event in realtime. we normally use irc but for people
> that dont do theres this new chance to see and say.

So apart from the streaming technology - which we can start documenting
on the wiki, I'm very interested in discussing this bit - how to enable
remote presence and contribution - which seems like the least developed
and documented bit of the streaming experience, and the most dependent
on social as much as technical processes. 

It seems like this chat + web client page is a really nice approach that
I've seen work well before. It addresses some problems I've noticed with
remote participation and streaming from conferences generally. Is the
chat it irc though? Or a remotely hosted web chat? I think using an irc
web client like CGI:irc might be a good idea if we want to allow people
to connect and participate via their regular irc setups. Are there other
options that people know about? I've not found any.. for hosted chat,
gabbly.com looks good, and provides RSS feeds of conversations which
might be useful. Apart form that, there seems to be a lack of good web
irc clients that are easily integrated in web pages.

I'm a firm believer in the use of irc as a backchannel, so I'd like
to know how it can be used best alongside other technologies. Here are
some setups I've observed:

- 1. irc transcription:

  There's a general conference irc channel, and a group of people in the
  audience on irc. someone changes their /nick to 'speaker' and does
  transcription while others in the chan (and irl) comment and can
  clarify things and ask questions on behalf of remote participants.
  When 'speaker' gets tired, someone else turns into the transcriber and
  keeps typing.

  Advantages: transcription = reliable log, something to read back over
  later, a comprehensive backchannel for people to help each other
  understand presentations and participate. It's also fun to hear
  people reinterpreting what's being said, joking, enjoying themselves,
  as well as hearing what's officially going on.

  Disadvantages: it can be confusing when people (especially
  transcribers) disappear or stop for no apparent reason (breaks!), if
  the schedule is 'open space' style and reconfiguring itself
  constantly, it can be hard to keep track of what's going on and who is
  actually speaking. You can't see slides if they're important. It's
  hard work for people doing the typing, often only a small group of
  people are into doing it and capable of typing that fast. It doesn't
  suit all types of presentations either.

- 2. live video stream:

  Often one live stream from the conf 'main stage'. This can work really
  well with certain types of presentation, and deals with some of the
  irc problems mentioned above but:
  - it's really important that there's a 'stream status' page saying
    when the stream is down, otherwise it's really annoying when trying
    to connect and getting bluescreen or nothing..
  - it's often useful to have a mailout to a list or a shout out on irc
    when the stream is coming online again to remind people to get
    listening, esp. if technical problems have delayed start from
    precise timings advertised (inevitable ;)
  - good lighting and a good mic and sound engineering is really
    important, and rarely done well! :)
  - it's often unclear what's going on during the breaks. People rarely
    put 'stream coming back in 5 minute' signs up between sessions, but
    it is really helpful to have those.
  - the question time thing is always really annoying for both stream
    listeners (questions are often inaudible), and for the live audience
    (people have to wait for microphones). Quick and plentiful
    microphone porters sorted out beforehand are vital! :)

Here are some things you almost never see, but I think would be great:

Low-band streams for workshops:
  - low band or audio-only streams from workshops or non-main stage
    activities, so you can actually get involved in other bits of the
    conf too. individual irc channels for each workshop &
    off-centre-stage session (if resources permit) would be great too,
    perhaps with still images + audio.  Hivenetwork boxes
    (hivenetworks.net) might be good for this ;)

Remote participation page:
  - a 'remote participation' page with stream statuses of all streams
    and details of irc channels / wiki pages and lists for each
    workshop and activity if applicable. Essentially this would be an
    addition to the conference programme - as well as having which
    rooms and times for presentations etc. a 'remote participation'
    section would outline irc chans, streams and other resources.

Streamed coffee breaks:
  - some way of streaming / interacting with people *outside* of the
    programme. It's often said that the best bits of the conference
    programme are always the coffee breaks. Obviously there's something
    wonderful about the high-bandwidth of face to face... but surely we
    could do something either in irc or using voip conference rooms for
    bits in-between scheduled talks so that people can chat and discuss
    what they've just seen/heard. Maybe little 'chat stations' near the
    coffee machine where you can listen to what people are saying and
    intervene would be nice. The talkaoke table might be a good way to
    do this: http://talkaoke.com

Live archiving
 - Sometimes it takes months for archives to go online, but that's not
   really necessary. It could be done live, semi (or completely)
   automated, so that if I arrive 4 hours late to the stream (if I'm in
   a different time zone for eg.) I can catch up on what I wanted to see
   and then join in afternoon sessions knowing what came up earlier. It
   would be great to see live archives instantly annotated & associated
   with wiki pages, irc logs and list posts as well, although I guess
   that's getting into feature-creep territory (or into actually having
   to write some code ;)

Question time:
  - directional microphones do exist. Perhaps it would be possible for
    moderators to use a highly directional mic to amplify selected
    members of the audience who hold up their hands. Either that or
    distribute little cardboard loud-hailers ;) I don't know how to
    solve this one: making asking questions easy and natural for the
    audience (no waiting for the mic), and audible for the remote
    participants.. Any ideas anyone?

Translation: 
  - I know there's been some great work with FLOSS simultaneous
    translation systems. Do we want to try and deal with that kind of
    thing? Maybe too ambitious...

During dorkbot citycamp in aarhus in 2004, Alex McLean wrote a little
ncurses terminal server app that you can feed a timetable.txt and then
telnet into and watch the time ticking down, showing you what's
happening at any time, who is speaking, how long 'til the next speaker..
which could be shuffled forwards or backwards 5 minutes by a few
keystrokes from a logged in administrator. 

That made it really easy to follow what was going on and people used it
both remotely and locally - to work out where to go next. It was also
projected into the space - where speakers could see it. It had the
additional marvellous effect of *making people stick to time*. They
could see very clearly that if they ran over time, the next person's
time was being eaten away. It made for a remarkably easy and
self-regulating conference schedule..

I'll try dig that script out from somewhere for people to look at, but I
get the feeling that this could be a really good opportunity to develop
some innovative methods for remote participation as well as documenting
the wonderful free infrastructures that people like the G.I.S.S. network
have already been developing :)

Many of us can't make it to India this October, and I'm sure future
WSFIIs will have similar problem, so it's kind of necessary for WSFII to
develop these methods - also, in a few years time when the oil runs out,
nobody's going to be flying anywhere anyway, so we might as well figure
it out while we still have some natural resources to sink into
infrastructure building.

Cheers,

Saul.


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