Proposal discussion

Budget

Brainstorming pictures

pictures on picasa

Prototyping - remote participant representations, polycom phones, network cam

Pictures on picasa

Remote user feedback

Audio: While it was OK when we tried it yesterday in an empty room, it really didn't work well this evening. Either it was too far away from the speaker, or there was too much ambient noise when people in the audience were talking. I think the auto-gain was probably reducing the volume artificially, and when I jacked it up, I ended up getting the ambient noise at the same volume as the person speaking. Kind of what people complain about conventional hearing aids. So when Larry is around, if there could be a wireless mic that gets passed around, duct-taped to his "ear", then at least the sound will come from the focus of attention. Think that can be arranged? On the positive side, it was the only channel that was always ON and never cut out. On my end, I have to get a headset interface so I don't have to hold it up to my ear and I don't have to use it in speakerphone mode. If VOIP can be arranged, that would be better, since I can do that through my computer without buying anything new. Do you think you can get a good computer-compatible mic so we can use Skype? I think there was a videoconf. mic in the ME310 loft, used on the big black Dell desktop computer. Perhaps that could be tried out next time for DesignX? I think these things cost around $100, so that might be a good investment if we can assess whether it works well.

Video: The AXIS camera, while the resolution is OK, still has some problems. It's not possible to know where the camera is actually pointing with reference to the pan-tilt-zoom control sliders. Since those are in absolute measurements, a click may push the camera all the way around. There's no feedback indicator on the sliders, and there's no variable-speed control. The arrows on the ends of the sliders provide incremental control, but they're hard to achieve fine control. In addition, there is a minimum of a 3-5-sec lag in control, and it doesn't always take effect at all. So in a fast-paced meeting like DesignX, making the camera work is most of the time way too late to track what's happening. On the other hand, I suppose it's better than nothing.

Presentations: It's imperative that the presentation material be sent to video-participants beforehand, or, if on whiteboard, maybe actively pushed to them as a screenshot, digital photo, or something, in the meeting. Or use Teamspot? The flat-panel monitor is too bright to see properly via videocamera, and the Axis, anyway, doesn't adjust light level gain appropriately. Changing it manually is a pain, esp. with the delay it's got.

Interruptions: I want to apologize for using the "frog" to interrupt and move things around. To make less of a mess of things, as I said before, please have a chat session open and attended to, so that there is an audible alert when there's a new message and that the machine is close to a designated person. Whenever I did use the text-chat, it sometimes took minutes for someone to glance at the screen and see that there was a new note. A back-channel is essential.

I didn't try LifeSize today, but in past attempts, when it did work, the tracking was faster, the video was awesome and the audio seemed better than the tri-lobe thing today. I'd like to give it a try next time as my main interface.

So, all in all, I missed a good chunk of Soren's first 2 slides, but, hey, he didn't get past his 4th one anyway by 7PM. Good feedback, what I could catch of it. I hope he can turn it into a good talk.
- Mike
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A couple of observations...
I like the crab ;)
The phone would have been ok, except I couldn't hear people who weren't near the crab, and I got the impression that they couldn't hear either if they weren't near it.
Also, though I thought it was cool to have something that 'represented' me (someone put a hat on it I think - cute) people didn't seem to know how to deal with it. I think my face was on the screen, but my crab was on the other side of the group. And when people realized they had to speak close to it, they did but then it basically became not so much an avatar as a large fuzzy microphone.

I did try the network camera. It was ok, though everything looked greenish. I didn't like the controls - they were sluggish, and overshot a bit on the panning. So I switched to xmeeting with the normal camera. The picture and color is great on that one and the controls work better - no lag and much less overshoot. And it doesn't seem to allow more than one person to view at a time - I tried to go back to it mid-way through just to see the difference, but it said there was someone higher up in the cue than me, and didn't show anything.

I wish Soren wasn't in my line of sight to the screen. Because he was standing in between the camera and the screen (that he was showing his slides on) - and wearing black too- the little that I could see of the screen was all washed out and white. When he moved I could sort of see what the slide looked like, which would have been helpful to keep track of what slide I should be looking at on my computer.

All in all it wasn't bad though. I was glad I had the xmeeting option to go back to.
I think it works better when fewer people are connected. Yesterday it was especially clear.

- Becky

Timeline for this quarter

Team iloft members

Malte Jung
Neeraj Sonalkar
Ben Jackson
David Sirkin