Standard system = telephone + Web

The standard telemedia system for a Meet me on the Web! Teleconference is an audio conference call plus a live Meeting Page on the Web.

Questions and Answers

Q: Where will the Meeting Page be for our meeting?

A: Our place or yours. All PGC facilitated meetings get a Meeting Page at the PGC Web site. Or we can do it at your site.

Q: Who will be able to see the Meeting Page?

A: Whomever you want to see it.
Public Meeting Pages are put in the http://www.pgc.com/meetings directory, given an obvious name, listed in the index for that directory, and publicized in advance.
Private Meeting Pages are put in a private place, protected by password known only to meeting participants, not listed anywhere, and kept secret.

Q: What exactly is on the Meeting Page? Is it like minutes?

A: The Meeting Page shows a high-level summary of the live state of the meeting, right now. A Meeting Page is therefore not like minutes in a couple of important respects. First, minutes are a fairly low-level record of a meeting, with lots of details and no graphics. Whereas a Meeting Page is a high-level graphical summary or synopsis of a meeting, designed for rapid scanning so that it can be referred to readily during the heat of a meeting. Like a map, a Meeting Page uses visual devices to emphasize important features so that they stand out in a context of detailed information. Second, minutes cannot generally be read until hours or days after the meeting, whereas a Meeting Page is available immediately, live, so that it can be used as an information tool by the participants during the meeting.

Q: If a Meeting Page is done in real-time, then is it like a transcript?

A: Yes, in respect to the immediacy; but No, in respect to level of detail. There are different levels for visual representations of meetings. At the bottom is the literal verbatim transcript, like a court recorder would generate. This is the most complete, exhaustive (and exhausting!) record of the meeting. Not very much use in scanning on the fly for orientation during the actual course of a live meeting. Next higher are meeting minutes. And the highest level record is a meeting map, a concise graphical summary of the meeting as it occurs, using spatial arrangements of text and graphics to delineate the geography of the group's ideas. Thus we have:

Meeting Maps <-> Meeting Pages
minutes
transcripts

Q: Who will run the meeting?

A: Whomever you want to run it. The default is for someone from your organization to run the meeting. The telefacilitator will not as a rule moderate, comment or otherwise interfere with the meeting process. He or she is there simply to graphically record the meeting content on the Meeting Page.

Q: Can the telefacilitator take a more active role?

A: Yes of course. The telefacilitator is present by agreement with the group to serve group. The telefacilitator's role can be defined in different ways depending on the group's goals and desires. The role can be settled upon in advance, or changed on the fly in mid-meeting. Here are some possible roles for the facilitator, arranged from less active to more active:

Facilitator is pure recorder, listens only.
Group members address facilitator to correct the page, or suggest items.
Facilitator intervenes, but only to ask for clarification.
Facilitator acts as moderator.

Q: What format are the Meeting Pages in? Will my organization be able to get copies?

A: Well, first, of course, Meeting Pages are simply Web pages. Because the Web is the most popular distributed multimedia format in the world, this insures that all group members will be able to see the Meeting Pages. The text and graphics in the Meeting Pages can be downloaded with the same Web browser you use for viewing them. And for importing into other applications like Word, we provide an easy interface to retrieve both the pure text in the Meeting Page and the embedded graphics as separate GIF files which can then be inserted into documents on a wide variety of applications. And finally, you can always retrieve the latest full graphics-integral-with-text version of the Meeting Page simply by clicking on the "PostScript Version" button on the Page.

To get a better feeling for actual Meeting Pages and their "Spatial Text" style, check out the page for a neighborhood discussion.

Q: Where will the graphic recorder be when he or she is facilitating our meeting?

A: Our place or yours. If it's your place, then the facilitator will be on site in person. One advantage is that she or he can bring a high resolution 1024x768 projector to display the Meeting Page so the group can see the action on the big screen. If it's our place then it will be remotely via phone or other telemedia. Of course, if you have a big screen projector, the group can still watch its ideas develop in real-time on the wall.

Q: Does a Meet me on the Web! Teleconference have to be arranged in advance?

A: No. It helps, especially if you want additional material available in the Web meeting space. But advance arrangement is not necessary [see next question].

Q: How long does it take to set up a Meet me on the Web! Teleconference?

A: About two minutes. Say your teleconference has already been going on for forty minutes and you finally realize "Hey, this is getting hairy; we need some help!" Fine, call us, we like crises. Together we will pick a name and location for your Meeting Page, the PGC telefacilitator will join your meeting already in progress, and the page will be up on your participants' Web Browsers within two minutes. Easy.

Q: Gee this sounds great. Is Meet me on the Web! Teleconferencing ridiculously expensive?

A: No.

Q: Must we arrange for the audio conference call ourselves, or will PGC do that for us?

A: Either way. If you do the arranging, then the PGC telefacilitator will just be another participant. Or you can give us the numbers of all the participants and we will set up the whole thing [takes about thirty minutes].

Q: What if we want to do the telefacilitation ourselves?* Is it hard? And what about other teleconferencing systems like shared writing&drawing and full duplex audio-video links? And what about ...

A: Wait, wait, slow down. That's more than one question. We'll get to all of them, but one at a time, please. And first, you need to go to more Q&A

* Fine; we'd be glad to show you how; check out our Telefacilitation Training.

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Note: "Performing Graphics," "Meeting Maps," "Meeting Pages," "TeleFacilitation," and "Meet me on the Web!" are trademarks of the Performing Graphics Company.