Presence and IntComm WG

["Rork, Joseph (J.P.)" <>]

Title: Fall Member meeting goals

The following is meant as seed for debate/discussion via email and/or this Thursday's phone call.  The opinions expressed are solely my own, and are fair game for hunting season.  I will not take offense to any criticism, constructive, recreational, or otherwise. 

I would like to start off by examining the strengths and weaknesses of our previous trials, specifically on the Spring '04 meeting.  We had decided before the meeting to de-emphasize voice and video due to the instability of the infrastructure, and focused more on IM, presence, location, and weather.  First, our largest challenge was end-users support on client installations.  We had many people that wanted to participate, but had problems for one reason or another with the installation and configuration of the software on their client.  Secondly, we still had a gap on the feature offerings for many clients (Mac, handhelds, etc).  Lastly, the location and ser servers were stable enough to leave the ICU, but not the hospital. 

In addition to the little issues that occurred, we also had some concern over the message that we were trying to convey.  During our group meeting, we discussed the possibility that there may be too much emphasis being placed on the RTC, and not enough on the PIC.  We agreed that it's little more then novelty to be able to video-conference the person sitting next to me, and that the message of Rich Presence was somehow getting lost in the mix. 

Taking all of these issues into account, as well as discussion from subsequent meetings, I've tried to prioritize the goals of the next trial:

1)  Stability - not five 9's stability, but enough to welcome people to use it and be confident that it will work well enough to convey our message.

2)  Ease of use - in order to attract more people to use it, it has to be easy to setup, configure, and use.
3)  Convey the core message - it does our group no good if people think that we are just another AIM.  Debatably, I'm not convinced that our message is clear yet.

4)  Show off other cool stuff that we can do to - 'nuff said. 

Several great ideas have been posted to the group as 'fixes' to the problems above and enhancements to the trial overall.  I've attempted to take the ideas and categorize them by the goals that I believe they help to achieve. 

1) Stability - I think that the biggest obstacle here is to resist the temptation to put off the work that we wish to do to the two weeks prior to the meeting.  In an effort to detour this, I have broken up the tasks into subgroups, each with a 'task manager'.  Also, I am attempting to place dates on all of the different tasks we wish to achieve with a 'frozen' period before the actual meeting.  This also possibly lends itself to the idea that the group create some sort of 'packaged release' that we could offer to universities wishing to setup their own PIC trial.

2)  Ease of use - this is one that I think I will get the most heat for.  Because of the lack of available, mature, full feature clients, my suggestion is to encourage the use of the kiosks and the web 'client'.  THIS IS NOT TO DISCOURAGE PEOPLE FROM USING CLIENT SOFTWARE ON THEIR MACHINES!  This is merely a, "hey, come check us out, it doesn't hurt; if you like it, get more involved with client X" or a, "please don't quit because you couldn't get the client working" tactic.  I think that our relationship with our previous client providers is essential, and the challenge to bring more to the table is important as well.  But if we have total control over the environment from end-to-end, our success ratio goes up.  Falling in this category would be H.350(auto-configuration of end points), walkup kiosks, Web-UA/portal.

3)  Convey the core message - I think that we can all agree that we are attempting to tell the story of Rich Presence, and how communication becomes integrated.  But the lines of where this starts and stops is fuzzy in my mind.  Having a client that integrates video, voice, IM, presence end-to-end using only SIP is a totally different story then having a system that is aware of all of your communication devices, location information, and calendaring information, creating your presence at many layers, protocol unspecified.  Neither of these are obviously not the 'correct' answer, but as a group we need to nail down what the correct answer is and all move in that direction.  I'm drafting a separate note on my ideas on this topic.  Falling in this category is location presence fuzzing, possibly location-specific resources, possibly client support for iLBC, depending on where we fall with our dependence on RTC.

4)  Show off other … - Once people get the idea, then we can start to show them some great things that can be done with the technology.  Everything else falls here.

Once again, I am hoping that this stirs up the nest and creates some lively discussion.  Thank you for taking the time to read it.

Regards,
Joseph Rork
Associate Architect
Next Generation Collaborative Computing, SIE
Ford Motor Company
Phone: 313-594-6672
Email:
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