response 126 of 299:

Aug 28 18:41 UTC 2002

re #106: Hahahaha!  You don't know your M-Net history.  I have attended 
Arbornet Board meetings lasting over 3 hours.

Arbornet has tried on-line meetings via party, and they didn't work 
well.  I didn't participate, but as I understand it, there were 
intrusive users making discussion hard, there were problems with 
getting everyone connected at once, and it just generally didn't work 
well.  That's not to say it wouldn't work fine for Grex.

I am in favor of resolving this, somehow, now that it's been raised and 
discussed as much as it has.  I'd like the goal to be to find a 
reasonable policy to integrate remote Board members into Grex 
operations, and I'd like to see it happen by the next Board meeting.

response 134 of 299:

Aug 28 19:28 UTC 2002

I'd be happy to try a !party board meeting.  I'd like to see
how it goes and even if it's a spectacular failure, we'll have
learned something.

response 136 of 299:

Aug 28 20:21 UTC 2002

I have never been involved with a board meeting that used teleconferencing
for more than one physically absent board meetings, but even one had
limitations, such as not being able to "recognize" that absent board
member when he wished to speak. Having all or a majority having to butt
in to be recognized sounds chaotic. The same is true in a party format.
A person cannot ask to be recognized and then have their full say, with
others paying attention to just that one person (unless it is agreed
upon beforehand and some way to be recognized in turn is used). 

This is not to say that it is necessarily chaotic, but I think it would
require more structure than is usually the case. One way is for the
chair to call upon each board member, in turn, to speak once to an issue.
I used this more formal process only a couple of times, but it is amazingly
effective for otherwise very difficult questions (my organization bought
a headquarters building this way). 

response 140 of 299:

Aug 28 21:06 UTC 2002

party automatically announces who the speaker is with each line entered.  
I agree that some ground rules would have to be set, but I don't think 
they'd have to be extensive, so long as they were agreed to by all 
attendees.

response 142 of 299:

Aug 29 01:33 UTC 2002

I think we should draw a distinction between remote Board members 
calling in via conference call, and an on-line Board meeting conducted 
via party.  I wouldn't want the failure of one of these ideas to 
automatically lead to dismissal of the other.

response 144 of 299:

Aug 29 03:06 UTC 2002

Re #114:  That's not a "conspiracy"; it's "majority rule."

response 148 of 299:

Aug 29 07:44 UTC 2002

I've had a lot of experience over the last few years with meetings via
speakerphone, and I've never had the sorts of problems gull thinks are
inevitable.  Certainly, such problems can exist, but they're solved pretty
easily if they're not declared to be unsolvable.

The ideal way to have conference call meetings is with those Polycom
speakerphones, which have microphones facing three different directions, and
also some external mics to put at the far ends of the table.  I have no idea
how much they cost.  The $150 ATT full duplex speakerphone I have at home
isn't quite on that level, but does pretty well.  A lot of other phones (even
phones that are expensive for other reasons) throw in half duplex
speakerphones just to be able to list them as a feature, and those don't work
very well.

Cost can be handled a bunch of different ways.  Phone companies will sell you
a conference bridge, but those are expensive.  Many companies have
MeetingPlace, or something like that, running on their PBXs, since that's
cheaper than paying a phone company for every conference they want to set up,
so it's possible you could get somebody's employer to donate use of their
conferencing system during off-peak hours, when the Grex board meetings
generally are.  Alternatively, for some greater than one but not large number
of remote board members, you can set up a conference through your local phone
company's switch for somewehre around 75 cents per call.  Beyond that, you've
got the long distance phone charges, which at five cents per minute comes out
to three dollars per hour per remote board member.

That leaves the issue of finding a room with a phone line (speaker phones,
large crowds, and the low bandwidth codecs used in digital cell phones are
a bad combination).  A corporate conference room (anybody have an employer
who would let a crowd borrow a conference room for one evening per month?)
would likely include both the phone line and the Polycom.  If that's not
available, I think HVCN, or WIN, or some such group once had a meeting in a
hotel that allowed the use of a conference room on the condition that
everybody order food.  Alternatively, does Zingerman's still offer wireless
Internet access to their customers?  A notebook computer with a good sound
card and an external microphone could make a very nice VOIP speakerphone. 
How's the sound quality on Net2Phone and its rivals?

response 150 of 299:

Aug 29 13:30 UTC 2002

resp:145 - That's rather dismissive of you, Sapna.  Disruptive meetings 
result in issues that do not get resolved, time wasted and frustration 
for all involved.  You call that minor?  If nothing gets accomlished 
because the meeting format does not work, there is a problem.  Don't 
overlook that simply because you want to get your way.

resp:149 - This is not a "get over it and get on with it" issue.  
Neither is it a "you'd do it if you really wanted to" issue.  You're 
talking about investing in equipment as well as what will work best 
given the facilities the board has to choose from, the quality of the 
technology, and other variables that ought be considered.  If all of 
that isn't considered and the board purchases equipment that doesn't do 
the job, then people will start complaining that grex isn't responsible 
with its money.