Fw: Re: [North America] Post from Stewart Bruce

[Robert Hollingsworth]

Hmm... looks like this only replied directly to Mark, so I'll try it this way...
My comments in top of quoted section...
(apologies if this appears twice...)
Robert

That's an intriguing idea.  Certainly one way to get access to people who don't feel like traveling very far.  So many times with physical venues, there's a huge over-representation of attendees who live within 50 miles of the meeting place.

Does anyone here have some experience with virtual conferences?  Does this tend to be multiple small groups in geographically scattered locations, with camera operators at each location?  I wonder if the dynamics are such that people can converse comfortably and really interact, or does it become rigid where everyone feels compelled to shout the way they do when there's someone attending a meeting via speaker phone..

One possibility to explore with something like this -- have a 'read-only' level of participation, where people can passively monitor the proceedings over the web from their
 desks?

Robert

Why don't we plan to hold a virtual conference?  It would be practically free to host, we could hold a variety of meeting opportunities via virtual worlds perhaps meeting in the Army MOSES OS grid, hi-def video conferencing, sessions in Adobe Connect or GoTo Meeting.  All of this could easily be recorded for those that might miss a session or two.  I have colleagues who manage very large hi-def video bridges that I could convince to let us use for free too and I have five rooms in Adobe Connect that can each handle 50 attendees.  I suspect many of us have access to hi-def facilities that frankly do not get used enough as it is.  I myslef have nine Lifesize systems and several Lifesize Desktop licenses.  Plus you can download a free 30 day trial of Lifelize Desktop for
 a conference use too. It saves everyone a lot of travel money, avoids the expenses of hosting a conference, and we could have social events in the virtual world with BYOB.  Pass the pretzels please. And it is repeatable to do these kind of gatherings on a more regular basis.  Lets face it, we are all hi-tech folks so why don't we use the technology to facilitate our discussions? 
Stewart BruceWashington College

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