Suggestions for remote participation Re: [governance] IGF2012, Remote Connection
Marilia Maciel
mariliamaciel at gmail.com
Thu Nov 8 11:28:36 EST 2012
Hi all,
I would like to start a thread of concrete suggestions for improving RP. I
know all of us who participated remotely have our impressions of what could
be better, so why not share them?
My personal views about being a remote participant today - for the first
time in the IGF - is that the webcast of all sessions and the captioning
are tremendous tools, the existence of hubs multiplies IGF discussions, and
the fact that RP is available to any individual in the world is a
remarkable sign of openness. But, in spite of all the undeniable
achievements, progress needs to be made to ensure inclusion of views of
remote participants into the IGF debate.
That difficulty, in my opinion, has to do with one main reason: In spite of
the huge number of remote participants (47 hubs, more than 800 people last
year), the *methodology of most workshop sessions* *remains unchanged*. We
have not adjust to the new reality and the sessions are planned exclusively
for those who are physically in the IGF. One possible reason for that could
be that we have too many sessions on the schedule and too many issues to
discuss. My feeling was that session moderators were so under pressure
that, on the heat of the debate, they tended to see remote participants as
an obstacle to "moving the discussion forward", not as IGF participants.
Maybe* less and longer sessions* on IGF schedule would reduce pressure.
Time pressure makes people impatient with the difficulties that non-native
English speakers may have, or with occasional technical glitches, which we
need to cope with, if we really want to include remote participants. It is
up to us to decide what we value the most as a community: Speed of
discussions? Inclusion? Sometimes they are in a trade-off.
It would be important to r*educe the distance between remote participants
and the session moderator*. Most session moderators don't remember to look
at the screen and check if questions are popping up in Webex. So remote
participants lose the "timing" of making interventions. Maybe we could
establish a procedure so remote participants could *send questions to the
session moderator before the IGF*, so he could incorporate some of them
into his own set of questions to the panelists. For the "live"
questions, the remote participation moderator should have a *clear visual
way* to sign to the session moderator that a remote question has been
asked, like raising a red flag. Of course, audio interventions need to be
more encouraged, even if their moment needs to be carefully planned and
agreed upon between the session moderators and the technical team.
*There should not be a session without a remote moderator*. Imagine someone
who blocked her agenda to participate in a workshop and then, surprise: you
stay in a room talking to the walls. If remote participation is an integral
part of the IGF, this is unacceptable. Workshops without remote moderators
should not be approved (for real), and those physically present in the room
should confirm if the moderator is indeed there. As a last resort, anyone
could take the role of being a moderator in case the person is missing.
My main point is that, in spite of the technical improvements that should
always be made, *making remote participation inclusive is up to the
community, especially of those who plan the sessions*. Some organizers did
a great job in linking up with remote hubs, planing for the participation
of remote speakers and participants. But I seems they were still a
minority.
To mention the *technical aspects*, to me the greater problem was lack of
integration between webex, webcast and captioning. Going back and forth in
different windows was not practical. On a positive side, the quality of the
image of the webcast seemed to be better, and the cameras were placed in a
better position inside the room. It helped to read facial and body
expressions.
One last point: some time ago, it was proposed that a task force would be
created to *exchange knowledge and best practices regarding RP* with other
organizations that have also been struggling and making progress at it,
such as ITU (and many others as a matter of fact) in the UN. I don't know
why it did not fly. I hope that political sensitivities do not hamper what
could be a fruitful dialogue about a topic that is a common challenge.
Best wishes and a safe journey to all returning from Baku!
Marília
On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 9:38 AM, Imran Ahmed Shah <ias_pk at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> I was logged into Room #10 remotely, webex but there was no other attendee.
> The webex Schedule (as on 6th and 7th) has single first day pre-meeting
> of 5th Nov but after refreshing promt appear for login and after login it
> connected me Room # 7th Nov meeting.
>
> I keep trying to obtain response from Moderator (Ms Nina), but could not
> established interactive response, and I do not know that have she read my
> text input or not. I think Moderator was too busy in the meeting
> physically and given zero importance to single Remote Participant. So, RP
> was useless.
>
> Regards
>
> Imran
> (for IGFPAK)
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Jean-Yves GATETE <gate.one205 at yahoo.fr>
> *To:* "governance at lists.igcaucus.org" <governance at lists.igcaucus.org>;
> Rudi Vansnick <rudi.vansnick at isoc.be>
> *Sent:* Thursday, 8 November 2012, 3:18
> *Subject:* Re: [governance] IGF2012, Remote Connection
>
> Hi all,
> as Mr Rudi, I ve been following via that webcast tool too. I have the same
> problem too and the Room10 is not working either.
>
> Wishing you all the best,
>
> Jean-Yves GATETE
>
> *De :* Rudi Vansnick <rudi.vansnick at isoc.be>
> *À :* Crepin-Leblond Olivier <ocl at gih.com>
> *Cc :* governance at lists.igcaucus.org
> *Envoyé le :* Jeudi 8 novembre 2012 10h54
> *Objet :* Re: [governance] IGF2012, Remote Connection
>
> I've used the remote participation tools daily (till today). The webex
> allows to participate through the chat and the Q&A windows, but the webcast
> is always giving me the same error.
> If I want to see the room I have to use the webcast tool (
> http://webcast.igf2012.com/) , which is of course not fully synchronised
> with the webex session. From room 6 till room 9 the audio in the webcast is
> very low. With the volume on the max here I can hardly understand the
> speakers.
>
> The descriptions of the rooms workshops in the webcast window is not
> updated and gives sometimes wrong session information.
>
> Rudi Vansnick
> ------------------ Internet Society Belgium ---------------------
> President - CEO Tel +32/(0)9/329.39.16
> rudi.vansnick at isoc.be Mobile +32/(0)475/28.16.32
> Dendermondesteenweg 143 B-9070 Destelbergen
> www.internetsociety.be "The Internet is for everyone"
>
> Op 8-nov-2012, om 04:29 heeft Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond het volgende
> geschreven:
>
> > I suppose rp has probably been flooded with enquiries.
> > Since the beginning of the week, I saw Bernard run around trying to fix
> > things.
> > The remote participation computers running Webex are all wired in and
> > appear to work well but the network sometimes goes through some periods
> > of being very slow. This is when the WIFI works and guess what, the WIFI
> > does not work well at all. In fact, I have spent complete afternoons
> > without WIFI. (not enough IPv4 addresses to allocate -- and no IPv6
> > connectivity at all in case you ask)
> >
> > Whilst so far, I have been super impressed with the host country, this
> > is, in my opinion, the poorest Internet connectivity we've had at the
> > venue in recent IGFs. <sigh>
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> > Olivier
> >
> > On 07/11/2012 00:04, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> >> On Tue, Nov 6, 2012 at 8:16 PM, shaila mistry <shailam at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> >>> Hi everyone
> >>> I too have tried several times to participate. Each time I am sent a
> >>> different route of downloads and logins , finally leading to a dead
> end.
> >>> Please advise what can be done ?
> >>> Shaila Rao Mistry
> >> Have you tried contacting
> >>
> >> "Remote Participation general help" <rp at intgovforum.org>
> >>
> >> ?
> >>
> >> Do they respond?
> >>
> >> If yes, what are they saying?
> >>
> >> If no, let us know, so that we can push locally for those help email
> >> addresses to be handled in a meaningful way.
> >>
> >> In the long run, what we need is funding to put a competent person in
> >> charge of ensuring in an ongoing manner (year after year) that IGF
> >> remote participation is made available in a way that can be expected
> >> to work (which presupposes learning from what went wrong in earlier
> >> years, and it presupposes serious testing well before the first day of
> >> the IGF). It is simply unacceptable for an entirely new technical team
> >> to put in charge of remote participation every year, and the remote
> >> participation infrastructure again and again being so absurdly
> >> unreliable.)
> >>
> >> Greetings,
> >> Norbert
> >>
> >
> > --
> > Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
> > http://www.gih.com/ocl.html
> >
> >
> > ____________________________________________________________
> > You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
> > governance at lists.igcaucus.org
> > To be removed from the list, visit:
> > http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing
> >
> > For all other list information and functions, see:
> > http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
> > To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
> > http://www.igcaucus.org/
> >
> > Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________
> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
> governance at lists.igcaucus.org
> To be removed from the list, visit:
> http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing
>
> For all other list information and functions, see:
> http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
> To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
> http://www.igcaucus.org/
>
> Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________
> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
> governance at lists.igcaucus.org
> To be removed from the list, visit:
> http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing
>
> For all other list information and functions, see:
> http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
> To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
> http://www.igcaucus.org/
>
> Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________
> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
> governance at lists.igcaucus.org
> To be removed from the list, visit:
> http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing
>
> For all other list information and functions, see:
> http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
> To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
> http://www.igcaucus.org/
>
> Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t
>
>
--
Centro de Tecnologia e Sociedade
FGV Direito Rio
Center for Technology and Society
Getulio Vargas Foundation
Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20121108/76adb056/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing
For all other list information and functions, see:
http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
http://www.igcaucus.org/
Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t
More information about the Governance
mailing list