[council] Remote participation for Nairobi from ICANN's Senior Director for Participation and Engagement (Nick Ashton-Hart)

["Bruce Tonkin" <Bruce.Tonkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

See below for information on remote participation.  In particular for those 
running sessions see the section called "How everyone can help"

From:  
http://blog.icann.org/2010/02/remote-participation-for-nairobi-details-available/


Remote Participation for Nairobi: Details Available
by Nick Ashton-Hart on February 16, 2010

As some of you will have already noticed, remote participation details  are in 
the process of being posted on the ICANN Nairobi site.

Work on the remote participation for Nairobi began for me on the first day of 
December when I took up the post of Senior Director for Participation and 
Engagement, 
as the Board's Public Participation Committee asked me to propose the suite of 
remote participation options for Nairobi.  
They, and the staff, clearly understood that we would likely see a considerable 
increase in the use of remote participation in Nairobi.

What was proposed, and after consultation with the PPC and internally with the 
Meetings team and other colleagues, was a different underlying approach. 
That approach is based upon the following principles:


A more standardised approach 
============================

- we've divided up the different sessions into classes, and then given each 
class of meeting a set of basic services in common. 
 We've ensured flexibility by adding to this a set of additional services 
available on request. Where that doesn't provide enough flexibility 
and where special needs exist, additional services can be requested.

For example, where a key presenter at a session is unable to attend the 
physical meeting, 
we've had good results with them attending via Skype, 
with their audio connected to the public address system and video displayed 
onscreen.

This standardisation provides participants with advance notice of what they can 
expect as remote participants 
(and as a result they can then plan their attendance further in advance) and 
allows ICANN to announce remote participation for all meetings much earlier.

If you are interested in seeing the matrix of services to see how different 
classes of sessions' remote participation needs have been accommodated, 
you can retrieve it in PDF format here: 
http://nbo.icann.org/remote-services-matrix.



A more level playing field for participants irrespective of the bandwidth they 
have. 
====================================================================================

Both those with high bandwidth connections and those with more limited 
connections will find tools available to help them participate remotely. 
We've also reduced the bandwidth required for many services and provided more 
flexible choices for remote participants. 
For example, participants are able to choose a low-bandwidth streaming audio 
feed (for those sessions that support streaming audio) that requires 75% less 
bandwidth than it did at previous meetings.


Work to create a more equivalent experience between those participating 'in the 
room' at a session and those outside. 
=====================================================================================================================

Several measures have been taken to help integrate remote participants on a 
more equal level to those in the room. 
Everyone knows that there are many elements to a meeting that cannot be 
experienced remotely but ICANN is working to 'narrow the gap' between those in 
the room and those who are not.


Services should be designed in a way that does not require the installation of  
software on the remote participant's computer or device, 
and which provides the same features on all supported operating systems or 
platforms. 
=============================================================================

This is for several reasons, amongst them being: the need to allow people on 
devices as diverse as mobile handhelds, office computers, the use of many 
different operating systems across the ICANN community - and most importantly, 
so that everyone is treated equally. 
Wherever possible and reasonable, we look for open source / open 
standards-based products and systems.


In order to create a more coherent virtual attendance experience, all services 
will be setup per room, not per session. 
=======================================================================================================================

Amongst other benefits, this makes it easier for participants to bookmark URLs 
for remote participation services. 
It also helps give remote participation an underlying relationship to the 
physical meeting, 
as the remote participation 'rooms' in Adobe Connect, for example, have the 
same names as the physical meeting rooms do.


Monitoring Services during Sessions. 
===================================

A key part of ensuring the remote participation experience works well is 
ensuring that services are monitored - from a technical perspective but also in 
respect of the participants' experience. 
In order to do this, technical staff in-room will be connected to the chatroom 
for meetings with chat facilities 
so that remote participants can identify problems they experience (for example, 
that audio volume is too low for certain speakers on audio streams).


Services Offered
=================

For details on the services available in Nairobi, look at the Remote 
Participation Services page at http://nbo.icann.org/remote-participation.

It is worth noting that remote participation depends upon the Internet to work, 
in much the same way as the work of ICANN depends upon it day in and day out.  
If there is an Internet service outage at the venue, for example, that will 
mean an outage for all remote participants until connectivity is restored.


How Everyone Can Help
======================

The best technical provisions can only get us so far. Remote participation 
requires those in the room to be a part of making remote participants' 
contributions valuable:

■Leading or organising a session in Nairobi? Ensure you remember to include 
remote participants' questions and comments on an equal basis to in-room 
participants

■Presenting at a session? Ensure your materials are sent to the Staff 48 hours 
in advance, so remote participants can retrieve them and so they are ready for 
presentation in the Adobe Connect 'virtual meeting'.

■Attending sessions, either remotely or in person? Join the chatroom for all 
the sessions you attend - engage with the other attendees. If you are 
physically present, help bring the views of remote participants to the 
attention of those in the room, especially if that room doesn't have a member 
of staff tasked with attending the chatroom to raise remote participants' 
perspectives.
Resources and Links

We've put together a selection of resources related to remote participation, 
with more to come. Here's a selection of URLs that should be useful

■Remote Participation Services Matrix: 
http://nbo.icann.org/remote-services-matrix

■Explanation of Remote Participation Services and Concepts: 
http://nbo.icann.org/remote-participation

■Feedback address for participants: remote-participation@xxxxxxxxx

■Remote Participation Summary in presentation format: Nairobi Remote 
Participation Summary

Stay tuned, there will be more details coming soon.