[AG-TECH] Operator-Less AGs

[Brian Corrie]

I agree with John on this... I am not convinced having an integrated 
chat is the answer either. To me, a text chat can play two fundamentally 
different roles, the role of a back-channel communication for the techs, 
but also the role of an out-of-band communication channel for meeting 
participants (the leaning over and whispering to your colleague idea).

Both are important and both should be supported. Thus an integrated tool 
doesn't really work. What is really required is the capability to use 
text chat as a service/shared app that is attached to a venue. If a 
meeting requires a text back channel then you add a shared app for that 
purpose. Then the techs can use it. If the meeting requires an 
out-of-band text chat for ad-hoc communication then that can be 
supported by a second shared app for that purpose.

Note that this doesn't quite work in the current AG model in the sense 
that these text chats don't quite work like a shared app, and they don't 
quite work like a node service. You want it associated with a venue 
(some meetings will require one or more and some won't). You also want 
it associated with certain devices (like a node service). When the tech 
starts up the shared app, they want to have it appear on the tech 
control machine, not the display machine...

Also, you want the ability for meeting attendees to have personal access 
to the non-tech text chat. That means that people in the meeting would 
be connecting to the venue from their laptops, probably not having any 
services on their laptop node other than the text chat.

What I find fascinating about this is that the AG model can support 
almost everything above. Yes, this would not be the standard way of 
using it but in my opinion this is the AG's strength. I can't think of 
another collaboration technology that could come close to being able to 
support something like this in terms of functionality and the ability to 
be extended in this manner.

All we need to do is have someone create a shared app that integrates 
text chat into the AG. Any takers on someone writing a Jabber wrapper 
for the AG 8-)  You get what you pay for!!!

I am not sure what the Argonne folks are doing along these lines... I 
know they were looking at Jabber integration.

Cheers,

Brian

John Hodrien wrote:

> On Thu, 21 Apr 2005, John I Quebedeaux Jr wrote:
> 
>> Lately I've had sites that were operator-less (user knew enough or 
>> didn't know enough but was running it anyway) and as a result the 
>> users were not in Jabber or relied on the Venue Client Chat (which 
>> will sometimes lag or not respond occasionally or even worse, we're in 
>> different venues or something wrong so we can't chat anyway during 
>> troubleshooting).
>>
>> If you are setting up your users to run your AG themselves, please get 
>> them setup with Jabber and impress on them they should use it to 
>> communicate about the setup. Not to mention that they should show up 
>> early to do that audio check, etc. PRIOR to the meeting.
>>
>> So, I'm getting more and more requests by users that want to run the 
>> AG at their desktop or run it themselves. I'll be curious to know if 
>> this is the case at other sites.
> 
> 
> I'd really like to see the opposite...  I do use the AG2 Venue Client Chat.
> It lags, and doesn't respond sometimes.  And nobody uses it 'cos they 
> just sod
> off into Jabber.  So it is often just me talking to myself...  What's the
> point of having an integrated tool if nobody uses it?
> 
> AccessGrid users shouldn't have to start two applications, and it 
> creates the
> problem of which room within Jabber you should be meeting in.
> 
> I think more consideration needs to be put in by the users as to what we 
> all
> expect from side-band communications with AccessGrid.
> 
> jh
>