13 September 2002 Virtual Briefing
Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned for Presenters

• Presenters should not wear colors that blend in with the background color. Presenters should not wear clothing with patterns.
• Presenters should look into the camera while speaking. Presenters should not stare at their laptops.
• Presenters should reserve their rooms for at least one hour before the Briefing starts, to allow for testing and trouble-shooting, and for 30 minutes after the Briefing is over, to accommodate any overflow discussion and also for an immediate debrief with Briefing production staff.
• When more than one presenter is on camera at the same time (for example, in a panel discussion) the presenters who are not speaking should remember to maintain "on-stage presence" because they are still visible on camera.

Lessons Learned for Production Staff

• Briefing production staff should reserve a room in VRVS in advance of the Briefing.
• Briefing production staff should have slides and pictures of presenters available to display locally, in case of video or audio transmission problems.
• Briefing production staff should assign someone to monitor the multicast feeds in a remote location (during the September Briefing we missed the fact that IP/TV wasn't working).
• Briefing production staff needs to obtain a faster windows media encoder.
• Briefing production staff needs faster laptop for displaying slides.
• Briefing production staff should reboot all equipment one hour before the Briefing starts.
• Briefing production staff should test with exact same presenter room and MCU that will be used for the actual Briefing.
• Briefing production staff should use longer DV tapes for better recording.
• Briefing production staff needs to be a better way to communicate with the speakers in the presenters' room (perhaps write instructions for speakers on a white board?).
• Briefing production staff should use teleprompter for the speaker camera so presenters can maintain eye contact with the camera and read notes displayed on the teleprompter.
• Briefing production staff should use pre-set camera positions in the presenter room (and not allow the speakers to position them manually).
• Breifing production staff should expand on-screen captions to include the location of the speaker; e.g., "Steve Corbato, Internet2, from Ann Arbor, MI" to provide viewers with a better idea of how many locations are involved in the Briefing. Also add information about the technology used during the Briefing: "The Briefing is using V-Brick technology" or "Powered by the Internet2 Commons."
• The on-screen captioning lagged in some instances. For example, Steve Corbato would be tagged Stephanie Copeland or Chris Peabody. Briefing production staff needs to determine how to fix this.
• Briefing production staff should better define in advance the time needs/parameters of each part of the session. Also need to more strongly enforce with presenters in advance how long they are allocated to speak and how many PowerPoint slides they can include.
• Briefing production staff should strive for more seamless hand-offs between speakers (it was choppy at the beginning of the September Briefing, but became more fluid toward the end).
• All remote locations should provide a phone line near the presenter in case the cell phone doesn't work.
• All remote speaker sites must be connected one hour before the Briefing goes live.
• Assign member of Briefing production staff to monitor incoming vb-tech@internet2.edu email to provide assistance for Briefing participants who are trying to connect.