Reopening the discussion about text communication media

[Ted Han]

Hey Gang,

I was passively aware of the conversation that resulted in the selection of Skype as the text medium of choice for CrisisCommons to organize through, but at the time, i wasn't actively involved in either the Haiti or Pakistan disaster efforts.  Having seen how Skype has fared as means of a mass communication in the Sendai Quake response, i have several specific criticisms of it's use in organizing CrisisCommons, and would like to see whether we can reopen this discussion, and either address the issues with Skype, or figure out if there is a more suitable means through which we can communicate.  There have been a variety of comments in this vein over the past couple days (although i realize that regardless of the choice made some will be dissatisified).

To that end, i was interested in putting together a demo IRC experience to share and evaluate with others.  My goals are as follows:

1) intuitive text based chat accessible through native clients and the web (it should be possible to just drop new users in front of it and have them function fine)

2) history recorded via an IRC Bot and posted via a database driven website (such that new participants can revisit or be linked to what has been said previously)

3) Tools for some basic automatic summarization of chat history via website (basic link summarization and annotation)

I am also very interested to hear what ideas others have regarding other options as well for IRC, Skype, Google Groups or other media.

Cheers!

-Ted

[Tim Schwartz]

Hey Ted,

IRC is way way better than Skype the only downside is the startup
costs for non-tech techies, as well the fact that a lot of other
volunteer humanitarians use Skype. If you remember the Ushahidi skype
channel during Haiti, it was crazy busy. Even further when
non-technical volunteers started doing 4636 and other translations
they all used Skype. The time and cost to get all those people on IRC
would have been very large compared to Skype. Skype drives me nutty,
especially 5.0 but in the long run its a much more ubiquitous tool for
communication. With a low startup cost.

-tim

[Heatherleson]

Hi,
Yes, I prefer IRC. I think skype has a low barrier to entry, which is why people chose it. So, I propose:

1. New volunteer onboarding -skype
2. General work- irc

Or, as I will be suggesting to the core team: let's take the tool out of the process for a second and do business analysis.

Communication
Collaboration
Documentation
Storage
Redundancy
Training

And more

I prefer wiki, google docs, etherpad, YouTube, and wordpress. I like skype and irc. But, let's really look at what Deborah has started and reflect. How we use tools and for what purpose.

I would go as far as to say we talk with skype. They maybe hadn't thought about how we and the Crisismappers use their tool and it might be a productive gamechanger for them.

Heather L

Sent by butterfly wings

[Ted Han]

Hey Tim,

With things like http://www.qwebirc.org/ (see how freenode uses it here: http://webchat.freenode.net ), the IRC experience is really not that distinct from Skype's experience (skype itself being a knockoff of IRC's experience), as well as being accessible directly from web browsers w/o the need for a native client.  So i'd like to recommend leaving off ease of use discussions until we have an IRC experience we can compare.  I'm going to go ahead with putting something together anyway (as i have some stuff i'd like to try out anyhow).

The question about integrating with other communities is an interesting one, i wonder how to balance that against skype's really poor (and non-public) logging for new users?

I think it'd be useful to collect the actual use cases we need to prioritize.  I've been focusing a lot on the general user on-boarding and productivity experience.  What else do we need to account for? :)

Cheer,s

-Ted

[deborah shaddon]

Thanks everyone for the discussion. So awesome to see foks getting
excited. I think in general I'm going to do a virtual-team skype-chat
this week on Infrastructure topics (no pun intended) where we can
discuss in a more dynamic way....

This has been an ongoing discussion, but some history/perspective:
We've been collaborating via skype and IRC over the past 14 months,
and used to use a lot of IRC earlier on. We still have several
channels on freenode, and continue to do work there like investigate
IRC logging (to assist with our AAR), and have not abandoned IRC. The
move to Sype more for community collaboration started the last month
or so, and was easy to adopt for the broader community that IRC (ie,
in the Chicago Blizzard we had CERT members who are skype literate and
able to engage in response activities without having to take on an
IRC), and the Silicon Valley camp, and some folks from Boston, which
used both, provided positive feedback on the skype experience. And
IRC is good because a lot of our other partner communities collaborate
here (ie, OSM and Sahana. However, HumanityRoad users are more
comfortable with skype). And the IRC channels require a lot of
administration...sustained over a long period of time, and we simply
lack that support model to fully exploit at this time. So, at the
moment, IRC won the first round, Skype won the second round, I think
experience in both models will help us make better decisions about
where the proper placement will be going forward, that mostly takes
into consideration a broad range of community, as well as support
requirements.

At the end of the day, as Heather says, it will be based on our
requirements and uses of the capabilities for a particular problem.
One of the themes of this Infrastructure Working Group is to not throw
technology at people, that has proven to be disruptive to the
community in the past, without thought and consideration, and balance
that with the ability to try new things and solve problems. But also
try to eliminate duplication/redundancy 'for the same task/use-case',
so if we can distinguish 'tasks/usage' of the tool from other task/
usage of other tools, that would be key. And any new-technology
introduction would have to be considered with regard as well for our
capacity to manage and maintain all the support and admin processes
around it, so the more folks willing to help in those spaces (ongoing)
the better!!

So we do have an open set of tasks (or a project if you want to call
it that) to continue some work in the IRC space, I'd love to get
people more involved here. Regarding the IRC work, you can check out
the tasks on the wiki for the IRC work which include building good
support and training procedures around it's usage, and building up a
web-browsable logging mechanism (which we would install at OSL). We
can talk more in our virtual-infrastructure-team-meetup this week!!

Thanks!!
Deborah Shaddon
CrisisCommons Infrastructure Working Group Lead


On Mar 15, 6:47 am, Ted Han <t...@knowtheory.net> wrote:
> Hey Tim,
>
> With things likehttp://www.qwebirc.org/(see how freenode uses it here:http://webchat.freenode.net), the IRC experience is really not that

> distinct from Skype's experience (skype itself being a knockoff of IRC's
> experience), as well as being accessible directly from web browsers w/o the
> need for a native client.  So i'd like to recommend leaving off ease of use
> discussions until we have an IRC experience we can compare.  I'm going to go
> ahead with putting something together anyway (as i have some stuff i'd like
> to try out anyhow).
>
> The question about integrating with other communities is an interesting one,
> i wonder how to balance that against skype's really poor (and non-public)
> logging for new users?
>
> I think it'd be useful to collect the actual use cases we need to
> prioritize.  I've been focusing a lot on the general user on-boarding and
> productivity experience.  What else do we need to account for? :)
>
> Cheer,s
>
> -Ted
>

> > > -Ted- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Dan York]

Deborah,

Greetings! For those of us who are new to the CCIWG, could you please
either explain what the virtual-infrastructure-team-meetups are? (how
often? what medium? etc.) Or point me to a wiki page I must have missed?

I'm interested in participating... but am missing out on HOW to
participate in these meetups.

Thanks,
Dan

On 3/15/11 11:56 AM, deborah shaddon wrote:
> Thanks everyone for the discussion. So awesome to see foks getting
> excited. I think in general I'm going to do a virtual-team skype-chat
> this week on Infrastructure topics (no pun intended) where we can
> discuss in a more dynamic way....
>

> <snip>

> So we do have an open set of tasks (or a project if you want to call
> it that) to continue some work in the IRC space, I'd love to get
> people more involved here. Regarding the IRC work, you can check out
> the tasks on the wiki for the IRC work which include building good
> support and training procedures around it's usage, and building up a
> web-browsable logging mechanism (which we would install at OSL). We
> can talk more in our virtual-infrastructure-team-meetup this week!!

--
Dan York dy...@lodestar2.com
http://www.danyork.com/ skype:danyork
Phone: +1-802-735-1624

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