TECHNICAL REVIEW OF THE WORKSHOP

This workshop was hobbled by (1) the transfer in which the value of the grant demanded less funds to support a conference, hence we transitions to a workshop, (2) the proliferation of meetings and conferences has made it very difficult to get people together especially the world of nano and risk communication [it is a very small population], and (3) the economy led to many universities cutting back on support for travel funds.

This led me to take more seriously remarks made by Dawn Bonnell (U Penn) earlier this year at a meeting on nano-bio held in Ispra, Italy. It is time to use the technology at our hands to enable remote participation - webcasting and web-conferencing. Thanks to a strong tech team at NCSU we took a stab at this.

The results have been archived at our site and we webcasted the entire workshop on August 28-29, 2008.

We did learn a few things:

1. Rent a facility and pay the technicians.
2. Mike all speakers for archives.
3. Nail the live speakers to a spot on the floor so head insets are easier.
4. Record on studio quality tapes and have two tape decks esp. if you plan to archive the materials so they can be downloaded and streamed.
6. Connections need to be rehearsed with technical staffs at both locations. There are a variety of ways to do this including desktop systems such as Skype Meeting and iChat. However, the quality of free meeting software is mixed.
7. Power points needs to be designed to accommodate the video of the speaker (one quadrant needs to be designed without text or photo). Re-design templates so they are more appropriate for webcasted presentations with insets. Print and business of the slides can be problematic as well. Speakers need not to point at their PowerPoints with a laser pointer or a finger or even a fist because that doesn’t translate given how the broadcast has been planned.
8. Inset videos of the speakers needs to be fed from the remote site correctly. If the remove site fails to send the correct feeds
9. The primary issues are receptivity by the PC at the other end. Most webcast professionals can broadcast at high speeds but the Internet itself can be problematic. There are delays and glitches that impact receptivity.
10. In terms of streaming videotaped lectures there are many different software packages and we have not examined all of them though Final Cut with compressor seems to be effective.
11. It might be useful if we could tell the audience when they are on.

A summary and an updated version of this will appear in our annual report and maybe a publication.