iChatAV at MUG Meetings
iChatAV at MUG Meetings
- Subject: iChatAV at MUG Meetings
- From: Jim Foster <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 16:53:52 -0500
Hi All!!
I have been kind of out of commission for a few months - moved the
family to a new location which required not only getting a new ISP but
also finishing a new home office for myself. Almost there now.
Anyway, at our last MUG meeting in late January, we took a second stab
at using iChatAV. We'd tried it out about a year ago but made the
mistake of not properly testing or rehearsing the technical side of
things. Got the predictable outcome at that time.
This time, we tested all the technical things about a week beforehand,
using the meeting location, so we were confident there would be no
technical issues and we could focus on things like what kinds of things
come across well using iChatAV versus what sorts of things are still a
stretch.
Briefly, the way the session worked was that one of our members who
lives about 90 miles distant from our meeting location was online from
his home office. He proceeded to give us a little "tour" of his
computer room, introduced the family members, and then proceeded to
give us a demo of one of his new found Macintosh applications. He
conducted this demo, of Skype, by aiming his camera at the screen of
his iMac and doing the appropriate panning, cropping, and focusing to
allow the audience at the meeting to see his screen.
The session was very well received. Many of our MUG members still don't
have Macs which can support this technology, so seeing a "good"
demonstration of iChatAV gave many people reason to seriously consider
buying a new Mac. One thing we did which had an unexpectedly positive
result was to add a second iChatAV session where the person manning the
Mac at our end called up his daughter at her University dorm on the
east coast. It turned out that this demonstration of the ease with
which one can terminate one session and start another, just like making
consecutive phone calls, impressed many people who for some reason had
imagined that the first session had been made possible only through
extensive setup work prior to the meeting starting.
Our meetings are frequently taken in by one of the Execs of the local
PC Users' Club, and I must say he was just falling over himself wishing
that the rest of his PC Club's members could see this technology,
particularly the quality of the ful.clareen image. It was funny to hear
him first say things like, "We gotta demo this to my group." and then
watch him pondering how he was going to really propose that to the rest
of his group!
We learned that iChatAV is a great way to see the remote party and
their surroundings, but it is NOT really good for trying to do a demo
that requires that the audience be able to "see" the screen of a
computer located at the other end of the connection. If one needs to do
this, I think one needs to use something else, like perhaps Apple
Remote Desktop or some specialized software that could show you the
screen of the computer at the other end but also a floating "head shot"
of the presenter.
We also discovered that we need to learn how to better handle a
question and answer session between the remote speaker and our audience
members, probably by the simple step of having the person who is
handling the connection at our meeting end repeat the questions. In our
case, we tried to get people to wait for a mobile microphone but many
times folks don't see it coming, start their question, and then seem
reluctant to start over.
Anyway, the bottom line is that our session was very successful even
with its rough edges. I would like to see us incorporate iChatAV
sessions, even very short ones, into more of our meetings. Of course,
the fact that we have access to high quality video projectors, a full
sound system, and broadband Internet at our meeting location certainly
facilitates iChatAV.
I am wondering if other MUG Execs could offer suggestions, perhaps from
personal experience, as to who makes a good iChatAV guest speaker. Are
there any iChat web sites that might have listings of such folks or
contacts? What's been YOUR experience using iChatAV at your MUG
meetings?
Thanks for any suggestions.
Jim Foster
President
Macintosh Users East [MaUsE]
http://www.mause.ca
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