A regular hangout as an alternative for remote participants

[ibab]

I think that restricting the study group meetings to physical participants is a good idea. Several reasons for that come to mind:

• No messy setup of remote conference system at the meeting
  • these things go wrong 50% of the time anyway
  • would be difficult to have the meeting at R1
• No divide between local/remote participants
  • makes communication much simpler, as everyone is on the same page
  • it can be difficult for local participants to understand remote ones and vice versa (because the microphone is too far away, etc.)

But at the same time, I feel that we should offer something to people who are not based at CERN. Having (potentially) a lot of interested participants not based in one place is something that's special about our specific situation (compared to other study groups) and that we should take into account.

What about introducing a second meeting that is online-only? For example, this could be in the form of a regular hangout.

[RaoOfPhysics]

Are you thinking of splitting the sessions into a two-parter:

• 16:00–17:00: VCon (I would honestly prefer Vidyo since it can handle more than 10 participants)
• 17:00–whenever: In-person only

I'm not strongly opposed to that. @pherterich and @betatim want to weigh in?

[ibab]

They could also be simultaneous, with the two groups potentially doing different things. Having them after each other would make it easier for people at CERN to catch both, which I also like.

[RaoOfPhysics]

That also sounds workable.

[Edit: My second sentence made no sense. :P]

[RaoOfPhysics]

@ibab: We have the CERN_OpenScience Vidyo room for remote participants.

Should we close this issue? Or do we need to think a bit more about a regular VCon call from 16:00 to 17:00?

[ibab]

We should advertise the Vidyo room somewhere. Other than that I'm happy :)