RE: VMs: Voynich Conference: preliminary description... [RFC!]

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi John,

At 17:22 19/07/2003 -0400, John Grove wrote:
> I don't know if anyone happens to know how one could set up a coordinated
> video conference with at least one location on each continent or would
> that be just as expensive a venture as everyone flying to one location.

I'm looking into this kind of thing as well - logistically, it's quite a 
tall order... and probably big bucks to get even moderately right. :-(

Possibly the best we can achieve affordably is a live event, with a webcam 
(or perhaps an audio stream) out from it and a real-time text channel back 
into it - ie, a broadcast mini-conference with live 
questions/responses/comments from everyone else. AFAICT, that's about the 
limit of current technology - it may be no coincidence that that's just 
about all you need to sell live sex shows over the Internet... you 
decide... :-o

One conference-related idea I've had for a while (but never seen done) is a 
lipsync conference call - loads of companies now produce head-scan avatars 
(digiheads, 3d talking heads, call them what you like) which can be 
reasonably animated in real-time... a lipsync conference call is just a 
logical extension of this, with say 30-40 heads on screen.

But even to squeeze just the audio through from everyone to everyone else, 
everyone would still need broadband-level bandwidth (and a decent ISP 
infrastructure) to make it happen, never mind all the fancy 3d stuff. So - 
even if all the hardware & software was sufficient, it would still be a 
major challenge to get it right, even under controlled conditions (which we 
don't have).

Despite being a techy myself, one problem I have with the high-tech 
solutions is that they kind of miss the point about what conferences are 
for, especially a VMS meeting: they're exploratory things, where whatever 
answers we have are essentially tacit. Whenever I've met up with other 
Voynichologists, I've always learnt interesting and unexpected things, and 
we've noticed new things by looking at CopyFlo pages together - where the 
whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts.

Really, I'd like the benefits of this conference to come both from its 
inclusivity (many different points of view) and from its interactivity (the 
interplay between those points of view). We have a very inclusive thing 
going on this mailing list already, so I'm not trying to duplicate that - 
but my intention is to get attendees from a slightly broader range (for a 
different type of inclusivity) who will benefit from the more intense 
interactivity as well.

Hope this makes some of my thinking a bit clearer! :-o

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 


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