June 1, 2010 at 18:00 EEST
EACU BoF during TNC 2010 Conference
Vilnius, Lithuania
Agenda
- present situation - status of EACU group
- need-place for webconferencing taskforce
- focus of present groups
- focus of the possible task force
- relation to other task forces (media,emc2,...)
Minutes
The meeting was started with a roll call. The full list of participants can be found below. Among others, Dubravko mentioned that SRCE has a connect installation in Croatia. Niels noted that SURFnet is moving away from Adobe. The service won't be supported anymore. They are talking to Cisco and others to have a federated solution. SURFnet is interested in all kind of webconferencing related discussions. Kurt mentioned that ACONET has no such system/service in place in Austria. Antonio reported that RNP has 4 years experience with Adobe Connect in Brazil, the users' feedback is positive. Leif (SUNET) said that their installation has 200 users per day, the statistics are available on request.
Notes:
- Jan R (CESNET) introduced the EACU group to the audience.
- Matjaz (ARNES) showed the wiki page and explained the voting procedure on both bug reports and feature requests. The results of the surveys have not yet been presented to Adobe, although the group has a contact point (Mr. Schuman) to them.
- Jan M (UNINETT) noted that perhaps an EU market representative should be approached by this group. If NRENs individually approach the national Adobe representative, they may get a ticket on the problem but not the real solution in reasonable time. Leif noted that probably Adobe has no consistent policy over Europe; even there is no EU market representative as such.
- The EACU group should act together!
- There was a discussion about webconferencig related activities at TERENA and beyond.
- Peter (TERENA) gave a brief overview on the brand new GN3 Videoconferencing activity. The group of VC experts (5 people led by Rui Ribeiro, FCCN) has been asked to work out a business case (in 9 months started in May 2010) for a pan-European videoconferencing service. Based on this business case the GN3 Executive Committee will decide if this activity will become a real service development/deployment activity under GN3 project later on or not.
- Jan M (UNINETT) mentioned TF-Media as a TERENA new task force started in January 2010. TF-Media group doesn't want to accommodate any video – and/or webconferencing stuff in the first place.
- Niels (SURFnet) mentioned that TF-ECS (the former TERENA task force on Enhanced Communication Services) might be continued with a webconferencig focus.
- Jan M (UNINETT) expressed his doubts whether this group should really be formalised as a task force. He said, a TERENA task force needs dedicated time to run that.
- Peter (TERENA) ensured the group that TERENA Secretariat can give all the support to run a task force (if it is needed).
- There was no clear conclusion whether the group wants to become a TERENA task force or not.
- Currently, they are happy with the level of support that TERENA gives.
- Jan M (UNINETT) asked about the clear aim of this group. Matjaz (ARNES) answered that the main aim is to have a joint force on Adobe to do things.
- Niels mentioned that SURFnet gave up with Adobe because they are not capable to implement tailored service components in it. On the other hand, Adobe is a good product.
- The general feeling was that there is a lack of open standards in this area.
- Leif (SUNET) mentioned that Adobe Connect is used by small universities for distance learning in the Nordic countries. Skype is good enough for VC. Perhaps this group won't have any influence on Adobe, but it is also good to have a forum to share operational experiences.
- There was a discussion about open-source vs. commercial webconferencing platforms. Jan M (UNINETT) thought that there is no point investing too much in an intermediate (commercial) solution. Better to find an open-source project, invest in that and wait until that is getting better. The development community is the key around open-source projects. And there are no licence fees.
- Leif (SUNET) commented that the danger in open-source development is that if the others decide to pull out, one can easily becomes the core maintainer of the code which requires significant efforts.
- Distance education could be the killer application for webconferemcing. Leif mentioned that when the federated webconferencing service was introduced, the number of IdPs suddenly raised from 5 to 25. It is a popular application. The reason of this is that the service is free and there is no need of reservations. Universities can run a local reservation portal, if they want.
- Jan M (UNINETT) said if we get together a joint procurement can be done much easier. We can learn from each other and exploit that knowledge later on.
- There was a question about the various webconferenciong tools available in the market. The group found that there are at least 10-15 open-source/commercial tools and the home-grown developments.
- The group agreed to investigate not only Adobe Connect but other webconferencing tools/platforms either.
- There was a discussion about the actual focus and the planned objectives of this group.
- Jan M (UNINETT) asked whether it should become a general webconferencing forum or remain a focused Adobe Connect group.
- Per (NORDUnet) noted that a focused group is more efficient than a general activity although it has less flexibility and dynamism.
- Jan M (UNINETT) asked whether it should have a technical focus or a training focus (e.g., the Brazilians can benefit form that).
- Peter (TERENA) mentioned that a task force can do both.
- Jan M (UNINETT) stated that the most important thing is that the group joining policy should be open for those participants who have no Adobe Connect installation yet.
- Matjaz (ARNES) answered that the group should keep its focus on Adobe Connect but it can be extended towards discussions on any kind of webconferencing solution. In practice, there can be an EACU and a Webconf mailing list and TERENA can open a sub-space for Webconf under the current EACU Wiki.
- Peter (TERENA) noted that if the participants of the two mailing lists will exactly be the same (since everybody is interested in both), there is no point to have two separate lists.
- Jan R (CESNET) proposed that the Adobe Connect-related technical mails can have an [AC] tag in the subject line.
- Currently, TERNA hosts the EACU mailing list (called: webconf@terena.org) and UNIENTT hosts the Webconferencing mailing list (called: webconferencing@uninett.no).
- There was no clear decision on whether the group needs only one mailing list or two separated mailing lists.
- Dubravko (SRCE) did set up a Foodle poll to vote on the number of mailing lists. Please, participate: http://foodle.srce.hr/foodle.php?id=7gu9qpbf
Deadline is June 14, 2010.
- In principle, TERENA can host any mailing list(s) and wiki(s), UNINETT has no objections.
- The meeting was closed on time.
Chat
- David Vrtin: Non-technical users are getting confused, if they need to use too many diferent webconferencing solutions.
- David Vrtin: We need to have one or mazbe two webconferencing solution and choosen solution should be supported for many years from NRENs. It is not good to have every year or two some completly different solutions.
- David Vrtin: Webconf solutions is needed now, not in year or two. Do we really have time and resources to develop our own ''perfect'' solutions?
- markus schneider, swe: It could be helpful to have a commonly perceived timeline as to when we expect different scenarios/solutions to become realisable. There are always switch costs but they will be easier to handle them if we can coordinate our efforts and act as a collective business intelligence unit with focus on webconferencing issues.
- markus schneider, swe: Agree also with David - connect is one solution now
- markus schneider, swe: tell the swedish guy to speak up, we cannot hear him ;-)
- markus schneider, swe: agree!
- David Vrtin: about last goal from slide: we need more and much better cooperation with PR departments/groups to work on webconferencing promotion and show users with Skype that there is also something else, that is much more appropriate for them...
- markus schneider, swe: i don't think we've met before David, but I think we should get in contact ;-)
Recording
Adobe Connect recording of the meeting
List of participants
The list of BoF participants can be found here.