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 herebelow. 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
unmigrated-wiki- markup\- 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
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- 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.