LAST CALL for DOODLING NCUC August Monthly Constituency Meeting (10-16 August)

[Rebecca MacKinnon]

Sorry I will be unable to make any meeting next week as I will be off the
grid.
I'd like to make one suggestion, however, as NCUC's membership grows to
include more and more people not living in Western developed
countries. Global Voices, which has regular online meetings with community
members and editors all over the world, has generally stuck to IRC because
holding meetings with anything that takes up more bandwith ended up acting
as a barrier to participation for people joining from slow or unreliable
connections in far-flung corners of the globe. The lesson that we have taken
from almost 5 years trying to run an international grassroots media
organization in as inclusive a manner as possible is that inclusiveness
requires defaulting to meeting technologies that are accessible to those
whose bandwith is lowest and who may be running old operating systems - or
not using MacOS or Windoze.

Some people tried to join last time but had problems: some because they
couldn't get the conferencing software to work, and others because their
Internet connections were not high speed enough to hear the audio discussion
clearly. Isaac Mao's connectivity that day in Shanghai was bad, and he could
only see the text chat- he couldn't make out anything that was being said
vocally, which meant he couldn't follow the discussion properly or
participate meaningfully. As we get more members who are joining from places
where Internet connectivity may not be as reliable as it is in North America
and Western Europe (where even some of us have been having bandwith
problems) I suggest that somebody should volunteer to post a continuous
running text summary of what's being said in the audio discussion into the
text chat box - so that people who can't hear can still participate. Either
that or switch to text-only if too many people are having problems with your
current system.

Best,
Rebecca



On Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 1:21 AM, Robin Gross <robin at ipjustice.org> wrote:

> Dear All:
>
> LAST DAY to mark your availability to participate in NCUC's monthly
> constituency meeting to be held August 10-16, 2009.
>
> Please mark your availability to participate at this link:
>   http://doodle.com/375kdgnzasd45a3m
>
> The monthly constituency meeting presents a good opportunity meet many of
> our new members and acquaint them with issues before the GNSO; to hear from
> our GNSO Councilors on issues before the GNSO; to hear from working group
> and committee representatives; to receive feedback from the membership; and
> further develop policy issues and constituency positions.
>
> I hope you will all participate in the meeting - especially if you want to
> keep informed on the latest developments - or if you want to provide
> feedback and direction in policy development.  Together with this discussion
> list and the NING website, the monthly constituency online meeting is an
> important part of constituency policy development.  So please join in the
> call.  We have much to discuss.  Thank you!
>
> Best,
> Robin
>
>
>
> IP JUSTICE
> Robin Gross, Executive Director
> 1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA  94117  USA
> p: +1-415-553-6261    f: +1-415-462-6451
> w: http://www.ipjustice.org     e: robin at ipjustice.org
>
>
>
>


--
Rebecca MacKinnon
Open Society Fellow | Co-founder, GlobalVoicesOnline.org
Assistant Professor, Journalism & Media Studies Centre, University of Hong
Kong

UK: +44-7759-863406
USA: +1-617-939-3493
HK: +852-6334-8843
Mainland China: +86-13710820364

E-mail: rebecca.mackinnon at gmail.com
Blog: http://RConversation.blogs.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rmack
Friendfeed: http://friendfeed.com/rebeccamack
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