2.2 Experience with the existing systems

Video conferencing is now routinely¹ used for small inter-site meetings at the NRAO, to share lunch talks and in-house tutorial presentations between the conference rooms, and for personnel interviews that involve staff at multiple sites. Data Management and scientific staff are the most frequent users, but work groups in Human Resources, Fiscal and EPO have also had experience with use of the video systems for inter-site meetings and presentations. ``Set-piece" video presentations require a little more advance preparation and awareness of the video capabilities, but have also generally worked well. Some strengths and weaknesses of video for the conference-room setting are now clear.

In addition to enabling the use of visual aids, video meetings engender a much greater sense of actually meeting with colleagues at the other NRAO sites than do phone meetings. Video helps to integrate new employees into the inter-site working groups that use it regularly. Regular visual contact with staff at other sites reinforces personal awareness of the NRAO as a multi-site organization, especially for staff who do not travel to other sites frequently. Some meeting organizers now say that they feel short-changed if a room scheduling conflict makes them revert to a phone meeting.

The main limitations of video meetings are (a) a small but noticeable inter-site time delay in three or four-way meetings that use the video hub, and (b) occasional difficulty in hearing quietly-spoken participants in competition with ``noises off" such as projector fans. To get the best results, some care is needed over microphone placement, and some active camera control is required.

Trial use of video to cover auditorium presentations has shown that visual aids, speakers and audience discussions in these larger rooms can all be captured successfully if attention is paid to obtaining good audio quality. Placing permanent video systems and additional microphones in the larger rooms at the NRAO would let staff attend and participate in, colloquia, lunch talks, workshops, and ``special events" at the other sites on a routine basis. In-house tutorials, software demonstrations and informational presentations could also be made available to larger remote audiences than can be accommodated in the conference rooms.

Video conferences have also been held with non-NRAO sites in Canada, Germany, Spain, and Japan. Those held over ISDN lines have been fully satisfactory. Connections over the commodity Internet vary greatly in quality but can be useful if wide-area network traffic is not too congested.

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