From: "Bob Dixon" To: Subject: CALL FOR PARTICIPATION IN MEGACONFERENCE III ! Date: Tuesday, September 04, 2001 4:34 PM Megaconference III will be held Oct 3, 2001 from 10:30 am to at least 7 pm Central USA Daylight time. Everyone in the world with H.323 equipment is invited to participate. Megaconference III is organized similarly to Megaconference II, in that there will be a series of live presentations from authors all over the world, all brought to you over the Internet using H.323 video conferencing technology. They will be presenting on many interesting topics: World Bank satellite-based distance learning network. K-12 students in Germany interact with scientists in the Arctic. How we do H.323 on my campus. The world's first Virtual Picnic (much more about this later!!). How the Internet2 SEGP program brings K-12 to Abilene. Thinkquest - students with global projects. Learning and the use of video, and satellite links. How does Quality-of-Service affect video? Real live demo! And of course all this is fully interactive, so anyone anywhere may ask questions of any of the speakers. In addition to these presentations, a new feature has been added this year by popular demand. At several times during the day there will be open sessions called "Megacon Cafe". This is free time for anyone to talk to anyone about anything, or to take a break, or whatever. Megaconference III is being run from The Internet2 Member's meeting in Austin, Texas, as one of the parallel sessions, so there will be a local audience in Austin participating as well. The full agenda and presentation abstracts may be found at: 1. The Internet2 site www.internet2.edu, and click on the agenda for the members meeting. Note that this changes occasionally. 2. Real Soon Now, on the Megaconference web site www.mega-net.net/megaconference. This site is not quite ready yet, but soon all the details of the event will be posted there, and will be added to and updated regularly, so you need to check back often. We expect several hundred universities and other organizations around the world will be participating, and we would like your institution to be one of them. From past experience, we know that participation at a given location ranges from a single person, to a few people, to several locations, and even to auditoriums of people. So invite everyone you know to join you in this world's largest internet video conference. OK OK SO WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO PARTICIPATE IN THE MEGACONFERENCE? 1. You must have an H.323 videoconferencing system, with a hardware codec (examples are Polycom, VCON, Zydacron etc). You cannot use a software codec (examples are Microsoft Netmeeting, CU-SeeMe etc). 2. You must have a connection to the Internet of sufficient speed and quality that you can do good quality video conferencing at the speed of 384K bits/sec. Dial-up modems at 56K do not work. Cable modems and DSL often, but not always, work. Campus ethernet connections generally work fine. 3. You must register to participate as soon as possible. Do so by going to the Megaconference web pages and filling out the registration form. There is no cost. 4. You must participate in a few rehearsals that will be held between now and the Megaconference. The rehearsals help you and us get the equipment and network bugs worked out. You agree in advance that you will not get crabby and complain loudly if things do not work perfectly at first, because you realize this is pushing the state of the art to new heights, and so problems are to be expected. The dates of the rehearsals will be announced later on the megacon mailing list and on the web site. If you are not on that list and would like to be, just ask me, telling me a little about who you are. 5. You will be assigned to one of the MCUs that will be used in the Megaconference, and given instructions as to how to connect to it. The manager of that MCU may contact you to make specific arrangements. 6. Know how or learn how to be polite in a video conference. Mute your microphone when not talking. Don't blurt in "Can you hear me??" every so often. And so on. 7. Show up for the Megaconference with all your friends and participate fully and above all, have a great time!! This is the first of many messages to come, with greater detail on all aspects of the Megaconference. Bob Robert S. Dixon, Ph D, PE Chief Research Engineer | Voice 614-292-1638 Office of the CIO | Fax 614-292-7081 Ohio State University | Lab 614-292-7425 1971 Neil Ave, room 451 | Email dixon.8@osu.edu Columbus, OH 43210 | Video 128.146.199.98 and Senior Systems Developer/Engineer | Voice 614-728-8100 X232 Ohio Academic Resources Network (OARnet) | Fax 614-486-4594 | Email rdixon@oar.net ---------------------------------------------------------------i2-news-+ For list utilities, archives, subscribe, unsubscribe, etc. please visit the ListProc web interface at http://archives.internet2.edu/ ---------------------------------------------------------------i2-news--