[governance] Remote participation at Vilnius IGF 2010

Tue Sep 28 09:16:24 EDT 2010

 Dear Ginger,

thank you for your message regarding remote participation at the IGF
Vilnius 2010. It was indeed a great success, and thanks to all of the
hard work by all concerned.

In his recent reply to your message, Izumi Aizu made a particularly
interesting suggestion:

>How about, making things "upside-down"?
>I mean at physical meeting of the IGF, how about making the
>main speakers and participants all remote? So far, the remote
>participation and participants are regarded as supplementary,
>but not given a front-seat status. But think of online chat or
>conference call where no one is physically present and taking
>floors as main participants. Everyone is remote. At IGF, we can
>have the physical participants there, but making most speakers
>and interactions online, webcast, chat etc.

Having been the remote moderator of many sessions this year, I'm afraid
that this is a little premature yet. I have encountered more than a fair
share of technical problems, which I am planning on writing a report on,
as a part of my ISOC Ambassador project.

In short, I believe that the technology is not mature enough yet. The
difficulty does not stem from a single system; it is the
inter-connection of the variety of technologies used, which hinders a
smooth flow of information.
Conducting work in a timely manner using 100% teleconferencing and a
virtual room has been demonstrated on many an occasion at ICANN. I
recently found out in two large working teams, the "Special Trademark
Issues team", and the "Community Working Group on New gTLD Rec-6", that,
provided with an excellent and experienced leadership (Dave Maher for
the first group, and Chuck Gomez for the second), it is possible to work
on some of the most controversial subject and reach consensus, even
without a face to face meeting.

However, the moment you introduce a segment of the conference
participants to attend physically, serious technical problems hinder
progress.

The first problem is that of the reliability of the Internet connection.
In my interactions, I noticed remote participants and hubs timing out
due to network problems somewhere along the line. Text chatting is
usually most resilient to this, because it does not require much
bandwidth, but in order to fully engage remote participants in
discussions, you need to give them the ability to speak, rather than
only type.

And this is where the main problem lies: the interfacing of many
different systems (a public address system in the physical location, a
Webex session, a telephone bridge etc.), you end up with problems like
feedback loops, distorsion, unaudible speech and seriously distorted
speech which breaks the concentration of participants and hinders their
ability to devote 100% of their mind to elaborate a constructive argument.
Public address systems are designed to automatically suppress
instantaneous feedback, either by digital or analogue analysis of the
speech. Webex performs the same thing too. Ditto for telephone bridges.
But when you interface all three, unquantified delays outside the
tolerance of these suppression systems start appearing, and you end up
with loops - sometimes several seconds long. The equipment used to
broadcast the sessions automatically introduces delays. In some
sessions, for example, we ended up with infinite echoes, sometimes 6
seconds long - and a dialogue with a remote participant became confusing
- bordering on the impossible. We tried so many different ways to remove
this, and it appeared to be impossible with the current set-up.

A lot of work and testing will therefore need to be done, if we
ultimately wish to make things "upside down". The fact that we're
already engaged in testing this, is very good news indeed, but I don't
think that we're there yet.

Finally, let me also mention that the IETF's "VMEET" group is also
looking at this problematic. Like many other organisations relying on a
multi-stakeholder input, the subject of remote public participation has
been a concern for some time. Thomas Narten has drafted an interesting
Internet Draft document (sadly now expired, so I encourage Thomas to
follow-up on this), which can still be found on:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-narten-ietf-remote-participation

In some way, the IGF's remote participation this year appears to have
surpassed this stage already, and has been the first wide scale, global
experiment of such kind. I really hope that this will encourage everyone
to continue testing new technologies. I hope it will encourage remote
conferencing software manufacturers, and not only Webex, to capitalise
on this experience and improve their products. You and your team have
reached "proof of concept". Let's hope, for the sake of the millions of
people out there who would like to participate, and not only for the
lucky few of us who are funded to attend physically, that in some years
to come, technology will allow us to participate fully from the four
corners of our planet.

Last but not least, I hope that there will be cross-linking of knowledge
and experience in this area, whether ISOC, IETF, IGF or ICANN... or any
other group for that matter. We, the privileged few, have a duty to work
overtime to promote this digital inclusion. Without it, we're just a
déjà-vu pot-pourri of "The usual suspects".

Kindest regards,

Olivier

Le 25/09/2010 12:56, Ginger Paque a écrit :
> Remote participation at the IGF Vilnius 2010 raised the bar for remote
> participation in international public policy meetings. Not in sheer
> volume, although 600+ individuals is a good number, but in actual
> inclusion and participation, with 33 registered remote hubs and dozens
> of remote panelists, this IGF was indeed a global success. While there
> was successful remote observation with excellent webcast, audiocast
> and captioning, there was also the possibility of real remote
> /participation/ for those who wanted to comment, ask questions and
> respond, with the same privileges and priorities as those who attended
> in person.
>
> The next step will be to ensure that remote participants take
> advantage of this possibility, and that remote moderators learn to
> transmit the interest and personal power of the comments so that their
> impact is tangibly felt in the meeting room.
>
> An interesting (unforeseen) development was chat exchanges between
> remote hubs on the WebEx platform, as remote hubs gave feedback to
> presentations or comments by other remote hubs.
>
> Pre-IGF preparations were better than ever, with strategy, planning,
> training and information from the first 2010 OC in Geneva.
>
> I would like to thank the volunteer remote moderators from the
> panels,  DiploFoundation fellows and the ISOC ambassadors program for
> their engagement and precious time and energy; the Lithuania host for
> their support and their tech teams; the IGF Secretariat for their
> support and follow-up, DiploFoundation for constant backup, and my
> fellow RPWG members for their year-round worry, work and dynamic
> involvement.
>
> Thanks to all of the hub organizers for their work to include people
> from all over the world in this meeting too.
>
> The RPWG will publish a report later this year. We look forward to
> your comments and suggestions.
>
> Warm regards,
> Ginger
> -- 

-- 
Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
http://www.gih.com/ocl.html

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