iMechanica - web conferencing - Comments

Slides and videos on cellular mechanics

Zhigang Suo — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 07:50:38 -0400

Taher Saif has just pointed out this set of slides and vidoes of a recent summer course.

Indeed. On websites, like

Amit.Ranade — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 20:46:33 -0400

Indeed. On websites, like slashdot.org, asking moderated questions to a well-known tech personality.

visas and travel

MichelleLOyen — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 19:27:53 -0400

I agree completely, the idea of a global economy is just not there yet--people and goods still do not move freely across country lines. Governments currently restrict the access of scientists to technical meetings and that is a shame, and thus the world could be flatter, to borrow a well-used recent phrase. My only point was that you have to work out the time zone thing to do "live" conferences sans travel. Do I think there is a place for non-live symposia? Yes, absolutely, especially if they ARE on a forum like iMech where questions can be posed to the speaker for days and even months after the event. I would think the technology to do this would not require anything different from what we already have--video the talk, upload to Youtube, link on iMech and allow anyone to start asking questions and discussing. It's a great model and one we could all practically implement tomorrow in our own respective seminar series. But for the moment I'm with Pradeep and still flying across oceans several times per year for "priceless" live interactions in real time.

re: time zones etc.

Biswajit Banerjee — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:56:51 -0400

The time zone problem is trivial compared to the hurdles citizens of non western countries have to face to get to a conference in a country other than the one they reside in. For a day trip to Sweden I have had to provide extensive documentation and spend more than 250 dollars just to get a visa. For my trip to the ICF conference in Italy I had to provide almost a hundred pages of documentation for a 5 day trip. It can be even worse if you want a US visa.

I have had to waste many days running aroung and getting the documentation for visas. I no longer think that's worth my time and will not apply for a European visa again unless someone else does all the work for me.

Also, if you work in a country like India, the $3000+ that it costs for a foreign trip is close to half of what you earn in a year in academia.

If you want to include the whole world in "international" conferences then we have the technology to do it. My suggestion is that instead of keeping the proceedings closed, make them open. People can pay a premium for real time interaction if they want, But those who can't at least get to see and hear in their own time.

Biswajit

Time zones and non-travel conferences

MichelleLOyen — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:02:12 -0400

Although I like this idea, it's hard for me to see how to make it work. The idea hinges on live interaction in real time, else we are just talking about a web 2.0 forum for stashing canned videos of talks from hours ago. While there may be some use in having a live and ongoing comments thread after the video talks, I don't think this can replace interactions in person for one reason which never would have occurred to me before I "hopped across the pond": we have a time-zone problem. We want to get people in Asia, Europe and the Americas online at the same time? Impossible, or possible in only very limited time-frames for short times. Might work for a seminar but not an actual conference with back-to-back-to-back talks. While jet lag can be painful, trying to keep up with colleagues in an increasingly global research field is actually facilitated by "live" conferences where we are all captive in the same time zone and geographical vicinity. I am lucky in that Europe is sort of middle ground (7 hours difference from Singapore, 5 from the US east coast and 8 from the US west coast) but even then I find it difficult to schedule things like Skype calls with research colleagues in divergent time-zones. Unfortunately the travel cost burden is also larger for trans-oceanic travel than for that just within the US (where the time zone offset is not more than 3 hours total in the mainland)

Web conferences

Biswajit Banerjee — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 01:34:12 -0400

The problem of cost and, for some of us, time is a great disincentive for physically going to conferences. I feel that many conferences (though not all) are a waste of research money and, in the final reckoning, of taxpayer money. Consider a large conference in Los Angeles (or any other major city) of 2000 people, each of whom have to spend an estimated $2000-$3000 for travel/hotels/registration/per diem. That's almost 5 million dollars! Multiply that with 5 and you have $25 million essentially being spent mostly on face-to-face networking! Would this money be better spent in actual research? There is an interesting discussion on these lines at http://dorigo.wordpress.com/2007/10/08/ethical-aspects-of-professional-conference-going/

Clearly there is a need for remote conferencing. I would urge Pradeep and the organizers of the 2007 SES conference in Texas to pave the way and record some of the talks for posterity. Perhaps iMechanica or Youtube can be used to store and stream these videos on demand.

Biswajit

Future of Conference Post - Intro to ON24

Teng Li — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:23:17 -0400

With permission, I post the following email message I received from Cece Salomon-Lee at ON24, Inc.

Hi
Teng,

I came across your
posting (http://imechanica.org/node/2101#comment-5593).
I realize that you're considering using a free, web conferencing solution for a
small meeting but wanted to introduce you to my company - ON24, a webcasting
company.

We have experience
working with companies to hold virtual meetings with hundreds and thousands of
attendees. I thought you would be interested in our online FAQs
regarding web conferencing and webcasting (http://www.on24.com/abouton24_on24faq.html).
I
would also check out TheWebinarBlog (http://wsuccess.typepad.com/) - the
author looks into several solutions and explores the webinar
space.

There are also
some points to consider when you go from a small, collaborative meeting (0-50
people) to a large scale meeting with multiple topics presented in a typical
conference. Based on the online discussion, I believe part of your consideration
would include:

1) Do you want to
record the events for later playback?

2) How many
simultaneous, live viewers do you anticipate for each
session?

3) Will you have
audio with slides or require video? If the latter, than what quality are you
seeking?

4) We just
finished a project where the company held the live, face-to-face sessions, but
also recorded everything for those who were unable to attend live. This enabled
them to charge two prices: one for live + archive, and one for only virtual
attendance. Are you considering the same?

5) Be aware that
some software providers say they can scale quickly, but be wary of how they
will handle the streams over their technology backend. It can lead to quality
issues.

These are just a
few questions that came to mind. If this is something that you want to explore,
I can point you to the right person within my company to discuss. Please let me
know.

Good luck with
your event.

Best,

Cece Salomon-Lee

Marketing
Communications Manager

ON24,
Inc.

799
Market Street, 6th Floor

San
Francisco, CA 94103

p.s. Anyone interested in further contact with ON24, I'll be happy to share Cece's contact info.

Let's start web conferencing small. Now.

Teng Li — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 11:25:34 -0400

Zhigang,

I'll address your two questions in inverse order.

Q2:

Thanks for pointing out the talk by Fred Wilson. I enjoyed very much that video some time ago. I also agree with you on the effectiveness of the video+slides mode.

The video/sound quality of Wilson's talk is terrific, most likely done by the pros. But if one is ok with the quality of video chatting via Skype, then I think we are ready to conduct the presentation in a similar mode. I've been exploring the available softwares for a while and I did find a free one, called vRoom . It's a free version of a commercial product, with all the powerful functions but just with limited user number. So it's just ok for me to try with my students. It's based on Java, so no software is installed, just a pop-up window. This will be crucially great because the tech barrier is extremely lowered. It allows video sharing, real-time presentation, application sharing... I really like it so far. So I highly recommend you and anyone interested to give a try.

Q1:

Yes, we should start small. This is exactly what I've been thinking. For example, we can just run a small demo session with 2-3 talks. This is readily doable with vRoom. If anyone is interested, I'll be happy to initiate this effort. Then we can start accumulating experience on web conferencing at small scale. Upgrading to larger scales will be the matter of budget and community readiness. Softwares like vRoom can easily handle tens even hundreds of people.

Is anybody in now?

The future of conferences: start small

Zhigang Suo — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 08:07:34 -0400

Dear Teng:

Brilliant post! Pros and cons of offline conferences are all well said. I also agree with your prediction that offline and online conferences will co-exist, possibly forever.

Of course, they will also co-evolve. The current configuration is not optimal. By introducing the Internet as a new variable, we can substantially reduce the constraint. Let all configurations compete, and let an optimal configuration emerge. The new optimal configuration will surely combine offline and online solutions.

To translate your post to action, we can start small. We can begin with technologies that are readily available. Instead of starting with a whole conference, we can start with individual talks. Do you and others know what is the minimum effort that we need to start something useful?

For example, here is a talk by Fred Wilson on new business models of content distribution. By watching the video and the ppt simultaneously, I find that the effect is just as good as listening to him in the seminar room.

Are we ready to produce something like his talk?

The broader impact of web conferencing

Teng Li — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 11:30:43 -0400

Personal face-to-face interaction is something that web conferencing can not replace. Just like we send emails, call over the phone and chat online to keep in contact, but what we enjoy the most is still the actual social gatherings. We need both for an enjoyable life. Technology should be used to improve the quality of our life, by enabling new experiences not available otherwise, and by saving time for us to enjoy those priceless moments. In this sense there is no exception for web conferencing.

While in the post I focused on the time- and cost-saving benefit of web conferencing, here is another benefit I'd like to elaborate. The broader impact of web conferencing in long term. By eliminating the need to be present at a conference, web conferencing breaks the geographic boundaries among scientific community in the world. Researchers at every corner of the world can exchange their latest research more timely, frequently and vividly. I've experienced several times in international conferences here in US, when I rushed to a meeting room for an interested presentation, only disappointed by the session chair's announcement of the unfortunate absence of the speaker due to visa difficulty. I guess many share my observation. There're also many other negative driving forces preventing us from attending conferences although we're willing to. Wouldn't it be great if web conferencing enables the "presence" of those brilliant minds in the world who are unlikely to attend a traditional conference at a specific location?

Also, by reducing the cost of attending a conference, web conferencing allows more students, especially international students, to participate this essential professional activity. iMechanica is a perfect example. A large portion of iMech users is the students from all over the world. They download lecture notes, watch mechanics related videos, join discussions and lead jClub themes. I assume at least some of them will also enjoy attending an iMech virtual conference.

BTW, I like Pradeep's mastercard ad analogy. It serves well as a candidate senario for the next mastercard ad.

the mastercard ad

Pradeep Sharma — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:19:06 -0400

Teng, I can only give my personal preference. Your post reminds me of the masterccard ad on tv....we can use all the technology that money can buy to avoid travelling (and thus enjoying some of the advantages that you mentioned) however, personal face-to-face interaction is priceless. I believe that conferences through web (at least for my generation and older) are likely to be a convenient substitute occasionally rather than the norm.

Pradeep

two-way interaction

Zhen Zhang — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 01:34:11 -0400

It is a two-way interaction. You can ask question via microphone and also you can type your question and send it to organisor. Asking questions during webinar or after webinar depends on how to organize it. It is the same as we have a seminar in classroom, except that we cannot see each other during webinar.

WebEx

Teng Li — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:28:53 -0400

WebEx is one of the mainstream commercial web conferencing products (see the survey link in my post). I don't have experience with WebEx, but I've heard nice reviews from others WebEx users.

Zhen, are ABAQUS Webinars one-way or two-way? For example, can you ask questions during the webinar? Thanks.

Webinar can give us a clue

Zhen Zhang — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:16:46 -0400

Teng,

What a nice idea! I cannot help following up with you.

Except the budget constraint of video conference for scientific community, the location and schedule constraints are also a problem. We have to go to some certain auditorium without conflict with another class or conference, since such a well equipped teleconference room is quite popular. For example, last semester, John and Zhigang taught the fracture mechanics to both Harvard and Univ of Nebraska via the technology you mentioned above. Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) didn’t have such equipments, so we used the facility in Dept. of biology. We felt the convenience as well as the limitation. In addition, due to the low resolution image sent via internet, students in Nebraska could only read the powerpoint, but hard to read clearly what Zhigang wrote on the blackboard. Maybe for a teleconference as you mentioned, this is good enough, esp. the presentation is always given by ppt.

As you said, if we can attend a conference purely via internet on our own computer, that will be wonderful. A very good example is that ABAQUS gives the free seminars on the web, called webinar. I can attend such a webinar just on my own computer, either in office or at home, only if I am online and install a free small software “webex”. I can listen and read. And there is Q&A session. If I have a schedule conflict and miss it, I can ask for replay later.

I think in the very near future, webex or other likewise software will add another feature that allow attendees to see the facial expression of presenters.

What a wonderful future!