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Meetings are a critical part of the operation of any global organization. Historically, volunteers in the IEEE have flown millions of miles in order to carry on the face-to-face interaction with other volunteers in order to serve the membership of the Institute and the profession at large. However, with ever-increasing travel costs and ever-decreasing time for IEEE activities, our volunteers need a better mechanism for carrying out necessary meetings.
Electronic meetings are certainly not new to the IEEE. One-way and multi-point video-conferences have been used where the facilities existed to deliver educational programs, extend conferences beyond traditional bounds, and reduce meeting costs. However, the recent explosion of desktop communications ability now afforded the average engineer has changed this concept. Thanks to the Internet and its associated technologies, affordable point-to-point communication is now available on a much wider scale.
This document is being developed by the IEEE Region 3 Electronic Conferencing (e-conf) special project team. This manual provides directions for setting up and carrying out electronic meetings over the Internet from the participants' homes or offices. As there are numerous types of meetings, each having their own quirks and needs, the project team has chosen to concentrate first on the most prevalent types of meetings used by IEEE volunteers. These meetings are centered around the development and execution of projects.
Two basic forms of meetings have been identified for development: Synchronous Project-Oriented Work (SPOW) and Asynchronous Project-Oriented Work (APOW). As used in this document, synchronous means that all parties are on-line and communicating at the same time while asynchronous means that parties do not have to be on-line at the same time. Of course, asynchronous meetings are useful when all participants cannot gather together at the same time to discuss their ideas.
One critical group activity, brainstorming, is given special focus in this work since it has special needs that must be met. Brainstorming is normally a synchronous activity but can, with appropriate process, be conducted in an asynchronous manner. Additionally, even when conducting brainstorming as a synchronous activity, preparation and follow-up activities are normally conducted in an asynchronous manner. Special information targeting electronic conferencing for brainstorming are highlighted in the material that follows.
SPOW efforts are the (near) equivalent of the traditional face-to-face meeting. The technology that has been chosen to conduct synchronous meetings during this development project is Internet Relay Chat (IRC). This technology is similar to a telephone conference call except 1) it is conducted over the Internet (lower cost) and 2) uses typed text instead of voice for communicating.
APOW efforts can be thought of as carrying out work by e-mail although other technologies such as newsgroup, discussion services, web publishing are also available and offer some advantages. Later stages of this project will concentrate on the formal development of tools and guidelines for asynchronous meetings.
This project was developed using the techniques and technologies that are being documented. In practice, the group uses a broad mix of approaches to carry out it's business including both asynchronous and synchronous conferencing: synchronous IRC, e-mail, newsgroups, web pages, and electronic forms.
This work makes several assumptions about the platforms and technology available to the volunteer who might choose to participate in electronic meetings. First, it assumes that modem-based Internet hook-ups at approximately 28.8Kb/s are the normal means of access. Second, that the volunteers, as a group, will choose to use a wide-range of platforms from Windows 3.1 through Windows 2000 as well as other platforms such as the MAC and Linux.
Appendices of this document provide information about
Although the guidelines were used during development, actual usage will undoubtedly uncover areas that should be included in future versions. All suggestions, comments and contributions are welcomed.
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