Longer or more meetings?

[Henning Schulzrinne]

> I think that teleconferences might help, but large teleconferences
> are expensive.  Just for a design team in which I recently participated,
> I spend thousands of dollars of my "communications" budget to host our
> teleconferences...  Hosting hundreds of participants on a regular
> basis would break my bank.

It would indeed be expensive if we were to use a commercial 18c/minute 
800# conferencing service. This would not be effective for the WG 
meetings (but works ok for design teams).

One could easily imagine the following setup which is much cheaper:

- IETF secretariat hosts dial-in bridge that can handle both IP and PSTN 
dial-in (hint: there are active participants in some IETF WGs that build 
these things)

- those who can, "dial in" via Internet2 or other high-speed IP 
connections (if necessary, by visiting the nearest university) - the dog 
food paradigm.

- no 800# - everybody calls in on their own dime

The main cost is providing enough inbound lines. If you provide 
simulcast via RealAudio or similar tools, the vast majority of "lurkers" 
don't need to dial in at all. (If a lurker wants to "walk up to the 
microphone", they can just call up the conference number. In some cases, 
a text chat question will do the job. After all, even in real life, 
you'll have to join the end of the microphone queue.)

If you look at the minutes for your typical WG, you find that maybe a 
dozen people speak up during the session, in addition to the draft 
authors and chairs. That's well within a very modest teleconference setup.

I can't speak for I2 (and their international equivalents), but I 
wouldn't be surprised if they would be happy to help to provide 
satellite locations.


> 
> I've heard that the IEEE has regular teleconferences for their
> teams.  How are they funded?
> 
> Also, how will we train/prepare the WG chairs to run large
> teleconferences?  Doing so in an effective fashion is not easy.

No changes will be effective without training. One may note, however, 
that many folks already use these tools in their real life.

> 
> 
> Margaret
> 
>