[pm-h] Remote Meeting Experiment, initial thoughts.

[G. Wade Johnson]

We had our first remote meeting experiment tonight and I'd say it was a
qualified success. I plan to do a real write-up before the weekend, but
I wanted to give first impressions for some people who expressed an
interest.

Slides:
  - Using a Google Docs presentation allowed me to present and drive the
    slides for everyone else.
  - Unfortunately, anyone following along needed to be signed up
  - We had some difficulty with getting everyone connected to the
    presentation

Overall, it worked "well enough" for an experiment. Needs better
planning to be genuinely useful.

Audio:
  - Used freeconference.com to allow people to dial in.
  - Long distance call (East coast)
  - Not many people tried, but we only got confirmation on the ability
    to attempt it today.
  - Used the regular conversation mode, presentation mode might have
    been better.
  - Voice quality near the level of Skype. Some loud staticy bits were
    distracting.

Not a bad solution, considering it's free (except for the long distance
call).

IRC:
  - Difficulties with the IRC CGI for people behind a proxy.
  - Questions and comments as a side channel during the presentation
    worked really well. Fewer interruptions.
  - Useful for sending URLs and such to the remote sites.

Without the irc, the rest would not have worked as well.

We ended up messing around with the tech for about the first 20 minutes.
After that the presentation went fairly well.

No easy way to use whiteboard for quick sketches or something. Need to
consider that. We didn't have video. The freeconference.com had a
"record conversation" option, but I didn't try it.

I think, with a bit more planning and practice, we might be able to
make a reasonable remote meeting attempt out of this. It would probably
really shine if people from other PM groups were interested in one of
our presentations. (Lot's more planning needed.)

G. Wade
-- 
When they first built the University of California at Irvine they just
put the buildings in. They did not put any sidewalks, they just planted
grass. The next year, they came back and put the sidewalks where the
trails were in the grass. Perl is just that kind of language. It is not
designed from first principles. Perl is those sidewalks in the grass.
                                                       -- Larry Wall