Thursday, 12 Aug, 2 PM CST... Chautauqua1 Post-mortem

[John Toole]

All,

You really set a new level of capability, collaboration, and performance
for the access Grid.  We received  great comments from ACCESS-DC.  thanks
to eveyone for their pioneering work and dedicated support.  It was a very
successful first step in an exciting year ahead!! 

We really have a world- class  team effort!!

--John



At 01:51 AM 8/11/99 -1000, Margaret Lewis wrote:
>All,
>
>Outstanding job! It is amazing to see the progress that was made from our June
>session at Argonne. The video and audio were very good -- and there was very
>little delay with video so mouths mostly moved with the sound! 
>
>I talked to a number of attendees to get their reaction. Most people were
>appropriately amazed. The UNM audience was very engaged with Rick's speech and
>Rick's and Larry's Q&A session with live and remote sites. Rezuna's speech and
>the tour of the Access Center were also excellent -- walking through the
Access
>Center really proved to the group the capabilities of the system. The
video was
>amazing for a moving camera (and it was nice camera work). The interaction of
>Ken Bishop with NCSA, followed by Nestor's presentation once again had the
>audience totally engaged. Driving the microscope via the Internet while Nestor
>interacted was another high point. The audience also enjoyed watching set up 
>for
>sessions in the morning and between breaks and a majority of the attendees
came
>over to the "command center" to see the tech staff in action.
>
>I won't be able to make the Access Grid meeting on Thursday -- but in talking
>with UKY folks we'd like to see if we could more formally arrange for remote
>audiences at various sites for different presentations. The interaction of
live
>and remote audiences with speaker was one of the most engaging parts of the
>demonstration. UKY is only hosting a few remote sessions -- right now it looks
>like it is Rick's speech, a tour of Access Center, and the possibility of a
>couple of demos -- so remote audiences will provide the majority of
interaction
>opportunities. If we can get at least one site on-line with at least a small
>audience (and a few planted questions) for a majority of their
presentations --
>this should take us to the next level.
>
>UKY will only have one projector so they will arrange their screen
differently.
>Power Point will be displayed in 1/4 of the screen -- I am assuming this is
>doable since there was a practice session at UKY a few weeks ago? Also -- we
>need to get smoother with distributed Power Point. We did much better
today but
>it was a bit rough start yesterday. 
>
>Also -- a site without echo cancellation definitely presents a problem. While
>they might receive good audio from other sites -- their transmissions back are
>very annoying. We need to limit the interaction with these sites to bare 
>minimum
>-- and mainly have them talk to main site and have them muted when we talk to
>them.
>
>I think speakers who stay in one spot (like a podium or are seated at a table)
>provide the best video. I know people don't like to limit speaker's travel 
>space
>-- but Larry, Rick, and Access Center speakers came across very well because
>they were all in fixed spot. I would recommend that we try and limit 
>speakers to
>a fixed spot.
>
>Once again -- many thanks to the entire tech group for an outstanding job! A
>special thanks to UNM for being the pioneers -- it took lots of guts -- and to
>those wild folks at Argonne who had this crazy vision!
>
>FYI -- We got an excellent clip on a local TV channel and a great article in
>Albuqurque Tribune -- with a picture of Larry talking to a screen with eight
>remote shots. 
>
>Margaret
>
>
>Mark Hereld wrote:
>> 
>> All,
>> 
>> At the risk of jinxing it all, I think that we all really pulled the
>> AccessGrid together.  Despite some glitches, yesterday's demonstration went
>> quite well.  The backchannel was quite well used, and many of the
>> interactions went very smoothly.  We learned a lot.  And today it showed.
>> The audio was exceptional for the most part, and I think we applied a great
>> deal of experience to finding the best way to work with the network and
>> tools to good effect.  To a large degree, I think that the tech disappeared
>> into the background from the perspective of the meeting attendees.
>> Exceptional performance, IMHO.
>> 
>> We should get together and capture the lessons learned from this experience
>> before they fade from our memories.  I suggest, after some small
>> consultation on the mud, that we meet on the AccessGrid at 2 PM CDT on
>> Thursday, 12 August, two days from today.
>> 
>> If you participated in the tech support, please attend this meeting: your
>> input is valuable.  Anybody else who witnessed the events is also welcome
>> to participate.  Just head to your nearest AccessGrid Node and coordinate
>> with the Local Node Operation Crew.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Mark