WWW Fall 94 -- Notes for Multicast Interlocutors

Thank you for volunteering to act as an interlocutor for the multicasting to be done from the Second International World-Wide Web Conference in Chicago in October, 1994. As such, your responsibilities are twofold:

1. To run the workstation doing the multicast, ensuring that the technical aspects of the multicasting proceed correctly.
2. To cooperate with the session chair in managing the sociological interactions between local and remote participants.

The title interlocutor is intended to convey your role as the local spokesperson for remote attendees, representing their interests in a way that does not conflict with the needs of the local audience and presenters.

As a rule, remote participants are shy about asking questions. The remote attendance site in the HPCC conference room at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) will be managed by Jules Aronson, who is experienced with multicasting events, and who will be encouraging participants there to ask questions. This may break the ice, and lead to further network participation.

Thanks for volunteering, and enjoy your part in the meeting! The multicast should greatly increase participation and interest in the conference.

ADVANCE PREPARATION

1. Read the Notes for Multicast Session Chairs, which will be distributed to each session chair. These outline the way in which you will interact with the chair. It is likely that you will have had much more experience with multicasting than the chair, who may be a bit anxious, so try to help guide this person in doing the right thing at the right time.

2. Practice running a session locally.

CONCURRENT MBONE EVENTS

1. ACM MULTIMEDIA '94 (San Francisco, CA). Contact: Steve Casner (casner@isi.edu)

2. Commercial Applications of Parallel Processing Systems (CAPPS) Conference (Austin, TX). Contact: Ram Chellappa (ram@cism.bus.utexas.edu, ram@yama.bus.utexas.edu). It is not clear whether this MBONE event will proceed or not.

PROCEDURAL CHECKLIST

Setting up for the Start of a Session

1. Locate the chair and introduce yourself by name.

2. Locate the workstation near the podium, in such a way that you have eye contact with the chair.

3. Connect the audio in/out and video in cables.

4. Restore power to the workstation.

5. Execute the script transmit.sh

6. As soon as the previous session ends, start transmitting video using nv.

7. Do a brief audio test, by announcing the session (something like ("This is the World-Wide Web Conference in Chicago, where the time is currently 13:45 CMT. Very shortly, you will be seeing Session 3, entitled "Widgets for Everyone.").

8. Correct any cabling or other technical problems.

9. Open a UNIX talk session to Jules Aronson at the NLM remote conference site. He can provide technical support and feedback about reception. In a window devoted to this, type:

   talk aronson@wwwconf.nlm.nih.gov

10. In another window, open an editor in a file named COMMENTS. Use this file to record any information about the multicasting that might be helpful in a summary report, including any particular technical or sociological successes and failures.

During a Session

1. Interact with the chair as outlined in "Notes for Multicast Session Chairs."

2. Monitor MBONE transmission and talk session, deal with any tecnical problems.

3. Control the bandwith as appropriate depending upon how many conferences are going on in parallel:
   • Two Conferences (WWW and MULTIMEDIA '94)
     • Do not transmit nv video at any level higher than 128 kbps.
     • Use the default (pcm2) audio mode.

   • Three Conferences (WWW, MULTIMEDIA '94, and CAPPS)
     • Do not transmit nv video at any level higher than 85 kbps.
     • Use dvi4 audio mode. If we do this, we must change the sd announcement coming out of NLM, so that incoming audio will be using the same mode; contact Jules Aronson to do this at the NLM end.

Closing Down a Session

1. IMPORTANT: capture a file containing the list of remote participants in the session, by typing the letter "l" while the cursor is positioned over the vat window. Identify the file uniquely by time and date, as with the name:

   18Oct_10:15.txt

2. If there is a session following, wait until you see an audio connection in the vat window from that other session. Quit out of vat and nv. [JASON: there is a problem here with both machines using -S in vat; we need to test this transition!]

3. Shut down UNIX on the workstation.

4. Decable the unit, and move the equipment to the room used by the next session this unit is scheduled to be used in.