[technology taskforce] Follow up from our last call

[Judith Hellerstein]

HI All,

We had a very good call this past Monday and while I am still waiting for the 
recording to be posted to the wiki, I wanted to follow up on some of the issues 
discussed

Here is a link to the call page, 
https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/2020-12-07+At-Large+Technology+Task+Force+Call

where you can see the presentations made, the chat, and the Action Items.

What did come up in this discussion was the need for some thought and 
prioritization of At Large Technology issues.  It became clear of the need to 
formulate some kind of strategy for at large planning and discussions as it 
could take at least a year or more for the ITI project to get to the At large 
site and so we need to plan accordingly. Many issues that are a priority for us 
going forward are not necessarily a priority for other constituencies and so we 
need to do more work on informing others of why we urgently need certain 
things.  We should start work on creating a list of these items and why we feel 
they are critical to increasing engagement in our community especially during 
the pandemic.

The questions that were posed to us here by ICANN IT Staff were on Priorities. 
We were asked whether it is better for them to focus the IT Staff time, effort 
and attention on expanding RTT to all sessions, expanding language support and 
interpretation or focus instead on what new tools we can rollout to increase 
engagement. Despite the huge savings to the Meeting team but not having any one 
travel there seems to be an issue of funding and that it is either one or the 
other.  I do not see this as a zero sum game but as an exercise in setting 
priorities.

So let's discuss setting these priorities.  Also finding other synergies so that 
we can help convince other constituencies that these are needed. If we can get 
more AC/SOs involved and supportive of these issue than these rise higher in the 
ICANN IT's list for implementation.

I will start us off. In my mind, we need to have more use of zoom meetings over 
webinars. The use of White Boards and breakout rooms to me is a no-brainer. We 
need to also evaluate the use of automated captioning powered by AI for places 
where interpretation and Human RTT is not possible. For example in a breakout 
room we can have captioning when interpretation is not possible. By using 
Otter.ai.  ICANN has ability to use this service for free with their level of 
Zoom and a business account on this for a Non-profit is very inexpensive and so 
we can use this in those rooms.

The use of more cameras in the meetings space so that people could see 
alternative views, a greater use of YouTube to record meetings, especially for 
playback. YouTube's compression ability allows people with bandwidth challenges 
to watch and listen to the whole discussion. The same for RTT they can be 
reading what is happening and then jump in when they have something to contribute.

  On Playback, I love Youtube ability to increase the speed and watching events 
that you missed at 1.5 speeds gives me more time back  to work on other things

Networking technologies, we need to find a way to increase use of this. In our 
January call we will be discussing and possibly demoing these for all. The IETF 
and other groups use Spatial Chat. I have used this at other events and it is 
really good.

I would love to hear others thoughts and suggestions going forward

Best Regards,

Judith


-- 
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Judith Hellerstein, Founder & CEO
Hellerstein & Associates
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