[AG-TECH] Mute switch for AG.

[Cindy Sievers]

I don't feel picked on.....David is absolutely right.  Even a 10 second 
delay in audio is a long time during a meeting.  But there are many 
participants who would like to have some control over the audio.  We have 
the push-to-talk mics, but I have to tell the participants not to use the 
on/off buttons during meetings because they will disrupt the audio at all 
sites.  We mostly use them when there is a non-AG event in this room, it 
just gives the attendees a more secure feeling to know that the mics really 
aren't on. People get paranoid when there are cameras and mics in a room, 
even if the AG isn't running.  I had a big problem with people using this 
room for a regular non-AG meetings  unplugging cameras, mics, speakers or 
trying to turn them off because they thought we were on-line and 
transmitting.....very time consuming troubleshooting before each 
meeting....now that they can push a button on a mic, they think they have 
shut everything off....go figure.  What I should do is wire them so that it 
just looks like they are off :):)

However, just knowing if audio is muted is an important issue for 
participants.  I know some sites place their rat gui in a corner of the 
projector displays so that the audience can see if Talk is turned on or 
off, this gives the audience some information about the audio status.


At 01:30 PM 3/24/2004, bernholdtde at ornl.gov wrote:
>On Wed, 24 Mar 2004 12:33:51 -0700  Cindy Sievers wrote:
> > An easy solution is to use mics that have on/off buttons
>
>No, please don't do that!  The time for the Gentner to re-train may
>sound short on paper but during an actual meeting, it is a highly
>disruptive eternity for the participants.  Use muting on the Gentner
>or on the RAT instead.
>
>In my experience, audio is still the least robust (and of course the
>most important) part of an AG meeting -- it is highly dependent on the
>individuals involved in the meeting (especially if there is a phone
>bridge) and it is not usually practical to spend much time
>testing/tuning audio with the actual participants (they want to get to
>work).  I don't have a magic solution, but the more we all avoid
>anything that can contribute to audio problems, the better off we'll
>all be. (Of course a single site with audio problems is enough to
>disrupt the meeting for all participants.)
>
>P.S.  I'm not picking on Cindy here.  There are a number of sites with
>whom I've specifically experienced problems due to locally-muted mics,
>but I don't recall LANL ever being one of them.
>--
>David E. Bernholdt                   |   Email: bernholdtde at ornl.gov
>Oak Ridge National Laboratory        |   Phone: +1 (865) 574 3147
>http://www.csm.ornl.gov/~bernhold/   |   Fax:   +1 (865) 574 0680


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Cindy Sievers           Los Alamos National Laboratory
sievers at lanl.gov        Group CCS-1 MS B287
tel:505.665.6602        Advanced Computing
fax:505.665.4939        Los Alamos, NM 87544
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