Region 3 Newsletter Volume 15 Number 2

Page 5

September 2000

Electronic Conferencing 101 Charles J. Lord, PE c.j.lord@ieee.org R3 Econferencing Trainer

The principles of electronic conferencing are very simple and surprisingly low-tech. As Bill Ratcliff, the Chair of this project, likes to say, "It ain't the technology - it's the method." There are many ways of conferencing and collaborating over the internet, but we are faced with volunteers with various types of equipment and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) of varying capabilities; thus we are forced to find a "lowest common denominator" system that gives us good results without high-bandwidth ISPs or making you buy cameras, microphones, or special software. If you can connect to the internet well enough to send and receive email and browse web pages, you can probably do everything I am going to describe here.

The most basic form of econferencing is what we call "Sync" or synchronous mode. It involves having everyone on-line at the same time like a face-to-face meeting or teleconference. We use a mode called Internet Relay Chat (IRC, or "chat") to all talk together in a common "room" or "channel". Control is kept by following some simple but critically important rules:

• Everyone follows the lead of a facilitator, who controls the flow of the discussion.

• Only one person has the "floor" at a time - that person is determined by the facilitator

• You raise your hand to speak by typing a "C" for comment or "Q" for question, then pressing "enter"

• The facilitator will call on you when it is your turn by sending "GA" (for go ahead), followed by your name.

• When you are "talking" by typing your comments or questions, remember that the others cannot see what you are typing until you press "enter." You can break up a comment or question that takes more than one line by typing "…" at the end of a line, pressing enter, and starting a new line. Three dots at the end of a line tells everyone that you are still "speaking" and you will not be interrupted. "C" or "Q" may be sent by someone during this time, but those people will not get to state their comment or question until you have finished. The end of your last line of your turn should have a period, question mark, or exclamation point (whichever is appropriate) to cue the facilitator that you are finished. If you do not put any punctuation at the end of a line, it may not be clear to the facilitator and other participants whether you are finished or not, and the meeting can be delayed while they determine that fact.

There are some basic overall rules that also must be followed for the meeting to be successful. These are:

• An agenda must be developed and posted before the meeting. This is usually done by the facilitator, working with the "sponsor", or leader of the group that is meeting. In most cases, the sponsor should not be the facilitator of the meeting. The facilitator should not have a personal stake in the meeting so they can be as impartial as possible. We recommend the use of an experienced facilitator for your meetings this Fall. The econf committee will be happy to provide a facilitator for your meetings until we can get more trained.

• All reports must be submitted before the meeting and posted or mailed so that everyone can read it before the meeting. Reports may not be "read" to the group at the time of the meeting, as this takes far too long and is just poor meeting practice!

• The meeting must start on time. It is even harder to sit staring at a computer screen than it is to sit in a meeting room with other people around when key people are late.

• Off-topic discussions and "sidebars" (one-on-one conversations) in the meeting "room" will not be tolerated during the meeting. You can have a sidebar conversation with someone by double-clicking on their name in the chat program. This is a totally private talk and does not disturb anyone else. The advantage of this technology is that you can hold this conversation in one window while staying in the regular meeting in another window on your computer screen. Although not recommended for your first few meetings, it is possible to hold numerous conversations, and even meetings of subcommittees, etc while the main meeting is on. Just be sure that these distractions do not adversely affect the main meeting! You should also exercise caution by carefully noting in which window you are typing before pressing enter.

The clients for Windows 95/98/NT/2000 that we recommend are MSChat by Microsoft and mIRC from mIRC. URLs for these products are found at https://www.ewh.ieee.org/reg/3/e-conf/guidelines/ircinfo.html.   MSChat is free, and mIRC is shareware; however, the author of mIRC has given IEEE permission to use his product for free. (the product is only $20, so please send the guy the money if you use the product) Installing the software is very straightforward, and instructions are available at the above URL.. There is also a list of chat clients for Mac and Linux (Unix) machines at that location.

To join a meeting, log into the IEEE Chat server and join the channel that is listed in your meeting notice. This channel, or room, will have a name that starts with "#", for example, #r3econf is the usual name for the region 3 econf committee's meeting room.

The structure of a common sync econf is as follows:

Before the meeting:

The facilitator and/or the sponsor post the agenda, identifying who is responsible for each topic. Those people who are to give reports submit those reports to the facilitator for posting on the group's website, linked to the appropriate agenda item.
(see https://ewh.ieee.org/reg/3/excom/meetings/2000-01/agendas.html   for an example)

Day of the meeting:

The facilitator logs onto the server and agreed-to channel at least 15 minutes early. The facilitator sets the topic of the channel to the name of the meeting and its starting time.

The other attendees log in and join the channel before the starting time

At the agreed-to starting time, the facilitator begins the meeting by welcoming all and posting the agenda to the channel. They then ask for changes and additions to the agenda, which are noted.

The facilitator then goes through each item:

• Introduce the item
• Ask the "owner" or responsible party to introduce the topic
• The facilitator asks the group for comments or questions
• Each comment and question is taken in turn.
• Any actions are noted or taken. This may be a vote or assignment of action items to one or more people.
• Go on to the next item

At the end, the facilitator then thanks all for participating, recaps action items or areas of responsibilities, sets the time and date of the next meeting (if applicable), and ends the meeting. The facilitator then saves a copy of the log of the meeting and posts it to the group's website (if applicable). The log may be edited into formal meeting minutes if desired.  An example of a meeting log is at  https://ewh.ieee.org/reg/3/e-conf/logs/econf-2000-03-14.html   .

As you can see, the principles are simple, but they work wonders for your group if they are followed carefully. Although an econf may take longer (particularly at first, until you get used to it) and lacks the non-verbal communications of a face-to-face meeting, when you factor in the travel time and expense, it is much more efficient, costs much less, and is less intrusive than a face-to-face meeting.

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