Subject: Remote Participation Services

From: IETF Chair <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2013 11:04:38 -0500

Please see the attached report on the current status of remote participation in the IETF meeting.  Please notice at the end a call for potential experiments to explore ways that we can improve remote participation.

Russ Housley
IETF Chair

Bob Hinden
IAOC Chair

= = = = = = = = = 

Status of Remote Participation Services in the IETF Today

                      Russ Housley
                     1 February 2013

1.  Introduction

   For more than a decade, the IETF has tried to make it easier for 
   remote attendees to participate in regular and interim face-to-face
   meetings.  At the same time, some IETF Working Groups (WGs) have
   started to conduct virtual interim meetings.

   The IETF's current remote participation system ("RPS") consists of a
   outbound real-time audio stream for each session carried to remote
   attendees over HTTP, textual multi-user chat carried over XMPP
   (commonly called Jabber), and posting of slides prior to the WG
   session so that they can be downloaded from the IETF web site.

   WebEx and Meetecho are experimentally supported, offering outbound
   real-time audio stream synchronized to the slides for the remote
   participant.  Meetecho displays the Jabber Room on the screen with
   slides, and it can also be used to replay the audio and slides from
   a recording.
   
   Some WGs also employ ad-hoc tools, such as Skype for two-way audio and
   video conferencing and Etherpad for shared document editing.

2. Regular and Interim IETF Meetings

   Today, it is easy to remotely observe IETF sessions, but it is very
   difficult to participate in discussions.  However, several tools are
   used to accommodate remote participants.  To the greatest extent
   possible, these tools rely on IETF or other open standards, and they
   embrace both IPv4 and IPv6 without network address translation.

2.1. Audio

   Anyone can use a web browser to receive real-time audio of the IETF
   meeting sessions.  The URLs for the audio are announced in advance,
   and the audio recording becomes part of the session proceedings.

   It is quite difficult for a remote participant to have their voice
   heard in the session.  The WebEx and Meetecho systems can accommodate
   this with advance setup and testing.  However, allowing arbitrary
   remote participants to speak does not work well.  Connecting to the
   audio system in the meeting facility is quite problematic.  Further,
   a WG Chair would need sophisticated controls to maintain order if
   arbitrary remote participants were able to speak at any time.
   While WebEx and Meetecho provide some participation management
   features, but integration with in-room participation is needed.

2.2. Video

   In the 1990s as part of the multicast experiment, multicast video was
   made available, but this experiment has ended without evolving into a
   production service.

   As part of a separate experiment, some sessions use Meetecho to make
   video available to anyone with a web browser.  WG Chairs must request
   this coverage.  When Meetecho is used, the URLs are announced in
   advance, and the recording becomes part of the session proceedings.

2.3. Multi-User Chat

   Multi-user chat (MUC) is used both as a remote participation tool as
   well as a communication tool for local attendees, to raise and resolve
   issues without intruding on the presentation.  Each WG has a Jabber
   Room for Multi-User Chat, which employs the XMPP Standards Foundation
   (XSF) XEP-045 specification.  These Jabber Rooms can can be used at
   any time, not just during the IETF meetings.  During the session,
   remote participants that are listening to the audio are able to ask
   questions by typing them in the Jabber Room, and then someone in the
   physical room reads the question at the mic.  This is called
   MUC-to-Mic Relay.  The Jabber Room log becomes part of the session
   proceedings.

2.4. Slide Sharing

   Anyone can use a web browser to fetch the session slides.  WG Chairs
   are responsible for posting the slides prior to the session, and the
   slides (in PDF format) become part of the session proceedings.

   When Meetecho is used, the audio or video is presented in a
   synchronized fashion along with the jabber room and slides.

2.5. Remote Presenter

   When a presenter cannot attend, someone else usually presents their
   slides.  Some WG Chairs have tried remote presentations using WebEx
   and Meetecho.  Neither system is ideal, and the audio can include
   squeals and echos.  Both systems require advance setup and testing.

   The projection of the remote presenter's face as well as their slides
   seems to improve the experience for the people in the room, but we
   have only done this successfully a few times.  An extra projector and
   screen are needed for this to work well.

2.6.  Shared Text Document Editing

   In some sessions, there is an attempt to edit a text document with
   input from the local and remote attendees.  This is most often done
   for minutes and proposed WG charter changes.  Etherpad is the most
   popular tool for this purpose.  There has been no attempt to
   standardize the tools or protocols used for this function.

2.7.  Participant Management

   A typical meeting discussion takes place by people that want to speak
   forming a line at the microphone, and the presenter replies to each
   person in turn.  However, sometimes someone will jump the queue to
   contribute to a particular discussion point.  This mechanism does not
   provide a natural means for including remote participants.  WebEx and
   Meetecho do have a feature for noting a request to speak, but this
   is not visible to in-room participants.  Hence the burden of managing
   remote participation falls to the WG Chair or their designee.

3. Virtual WG Meeting and Leadership Teleconferences

   For a virtual meeting, all participants are remote; there is no
   physical meeting room.  A virtual WG meeting is usually held to tackle
   a very small number of open issues.  Hence, all of the remote
   participation tools must be interactive, permitting any participant to
   contribute.  The primary tool for these meetings is WebEx, in a
   conference-call mode, with no queuing of speakers.  The WG Chair's
   ability to manage discussion becomes challenging as the size of the
   virtual meeting grows.

   The teleconferences held by bodies like the IESG, IAOC, and IAB are
   somewhat like an virtual WG meeting, except they are held more often
   and size of the meeting is constrained.  The fact that all
   participants know each other facilitates the use of a more informal
   process than is typically possible for an open virtual WG meeting.
   Again, all of the participants are remote.

3.1. Audio

   For virtual WG meeting, access is open, as for regular IETF meetings.
   For leadership teleconferences, access is limited to those who are
   invited.  In recent years, WebEx has been used.  WebEx supports
   telephone dial-in as well as VoIP for the audio, although it may not
   be totally aligned with the IETF standards in this area.  Skype and
   similar systems can be used to dial into WebEx.  Sometimes issues with
   an echo take time to resolve, but the quality is generally quite good.

3.2. Video

   So far, there has been no need for video.  When someone accidentally
   turns on the WebEx video, they are asked to turn it off so that
   bandwidth is available for quality audio.

3.3. Multi-User Chat

   A jabber room or the WebEx built-in chat is used among the
   participants.  The scribes often find this useful for capturing
   accurate minutes.

3.4. Slide Sharing

   Slides are often sent by email in advance of the meeting.
   
   WebEx allows the slides and desktop applications to be viewed by the
   remote participants.  These are controlled by the presenter.  The
   presenter can be shifted from participant to participant as needed.

3.5. Remote Presenter

   WebEx allows the slides to be controlled by the presenter.

3.6.  Shared Text Document Editing

   Some scribes use Etherpad for minutes.  This allows participants to
   review and even correct the minutes as the meeting takes place.

4. Improvements

   The IETF has always used the Internet to do its work, and remote
   participation is no exception.  The IETF wants to improve the tools
   provided in the RPS tools; a better RPS would allow remote IETF
   attendees to participate more effectively.

   The IETF is seeking improvements that allow remote participants to
   more naturally contribute to in-room discussion and allow meeting
   management to integrate local and remote participants into a common
   queue.

   RPS technologies are not yet mature enough to create a production
   service for the IETF, but these technologies are developing rapidly.
   The IETF will be conducting more experiments in order to achieve
   these improvements as early as possible.  To this end, the IAOC is
   soliciting suggestions for experiments.  If you have suggestions for
   experiments, please tell the IAOC:

      (1)  What hardware and software is needed?
      (2)  What people resources are needed in the meeting?
      (3)  What are the expected benefits to the IETF participants?

---

From: Simon Pietro Romano <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2013 15:02:33 +0100

Hi,

some time ago I proposed an experiment associated with moderation in the presence of both remote and local participants (point 2.7 below):

http://ietf83.conf.meetecho.com/index.php/UMPIRE_Project

You can find the related IETF mail announcement here:

http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/vmeet/current/msg00394.html

Just for the logs.

Cheers,

Simon

> Please see the attached report on the current status of remote participation in the IETF meeting.  Please notice at the end a call for potential experiments to explore ways that we can improve remo…

                     					       _\\|//_
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                    				Simon Pietro Romano
             				 Universita' di Napoli Federico II
                		     Computer Engineering Department 
	             Phone: +39 081 7683823 -- Fax: +39 081 7683816
                                           e-mail: [email-masked]

		    <<Molti mi dicono che lo scoraggiamento Ë l'alibi degli 
		    idioti. Ci rifletto un istante; e mi scoraggio>>. Magritte.
               			                     oooO
  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(   )~~~ Oooo~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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			                                  \_)          ) /
                                                                       (_/

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2013 10:57:20 -0500

For the question at the end, I'd like to suggest that making an effort
to normalize some of the use of the tools that we have would be most
helpful.   It's not just a technology problem.

>>>>> "IETF" == IETF Chair <[email-masked]> writes:
    IETF> 2.4. Slide Sharing

    IETF>    Anyone can use a web browser to fetch the session slides.
    IETF> WG Chairs are responsible for posting the slides prior to the
    IETF> session, and the slides (in PDF format) become part of the
    IETF> session proceedings.

Slides are regularly late, and regularly not in PDF format.
They get updated at the last minute, so slide numbers fail.
I think that this presents too rosy a picture of getting slides.

    IETF> 2.6.  Shared Text Document Editing

    IETF>    In some sessions, there is an attempt to edit a text
    IETF> document with input from the local and remote attendees.  This
    IETF> is most often done for minutes and proposed WG charter

I wish we would do this more often, particularly for "HUMs"

-- 
Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>, Sandelman Software Works

---

From: joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2013 13:25:47 -0800

> Please see the attached report on the current status of remote participation in the IETF meeting.  Please notice at the end a call for potential experiments to explore ways that we can improve remo…
Thank(s) for doing the summary,  I believe understanding what is 
currently done and what has been done in the past is an important point 
for dicussion to jump off from.

An important consideration imho when the services were volunteer 
supported (as meetecho still is) is that they were relatively scalable 
relative to some previous iterations. audio streaming for all meeting(s) 
in parallel can be run by one person who has other responsibilities and 
little involvement from inroom participants. bidrectional conferencing 
typically involves more effort.
>     made available, but this experiment has ended without evolving into a
The service was offered really in two phases,  one in which 
bidirectional workstation concerning tools were used on both ends

vic/vat/sdr/wd

and bidirectional participation was possible. (archives were in rtp format)

and a phase through approximately the end of 2004 where streams were 
sourced in one direction.

in either case the potential audience was limited by the availability of 
ip multicast at a location.

expired version of the draft covering that time was:

http://www.watersprings.org/pub/id/draft-jaeggli-ietftv-ng-01.txt

---

From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:46:30 -0500

It is good to document what we have been doing. But the text seems to
focus on technology and tools...

IMO, what is missing is operational Best Practices. We seem to be
lacking them (are any written down?) And we don't follow them
consistently, especially from one WG to another. Many of the problems
I see with remote participation facilties have to do not with the
technology per se, but with lack of proper training and advance
testing. I get the general sense that getting the remote stuff to work
is a volunteer effort where each person tries it themselves with no
checklist of obvious things to do in advance, and no recourse if no
one in the room can get something working.

E.g., I was at an interim meeting last fall, where it looked like when
the meeting started, that was the the first that folk actually looked
at the facilities in the room (phone, microphones, etc.) to see how
best to allow remote participants to speak. The quick conclusion was
"can't be done". This should have been worked out (and tested) in
advance, not at the start of the meeting.

Thomas

---

From: Mary Barnes <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2013 08:54:14 -0600

This wikipage addresses some of the operational aspects you mention:
http://wiki.tools.ietf.org/group/wgchairs/wiki/RemoteParticipation

I would think that could be augmented to address some of the concerns
you raised.

Mary.

---

From: Marc Blanchet <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2013 09:56:50 -0500

Le 2013-02-07 à 09:46, Thomas Narten a écrit :

> focus on technology and tools…

I agree and disagree.

> one in the room can get something working.

right. I for one had chaired a few working groups where the main contributors (and therefore presenters) were not on-site. I spent a significant amount of time in preparation, testing, etc… with the great help of Joel Jaeggli borrowing me the right cables. For most time, it worked. Sometimes it did not work well. And given that the meeting rooms are all occupied, it is very difficult to test a lot in advance, so I did in off hours, such as during lunch doing sound checks while an informal meeting was taking place and I was disturbing, but my chairing was the first session after lunch.  

In summary, currently, bi-directionnal audio is not well supported (no criticism intended, just a fact), which does not help in having remote participation, specially for speakers.  So technology and tools, well tested, in production, supported, would help a lot, at least in the use cases I've been involved.

Having said that, your point of best practices is also relevant.

And also wg chairs doing more prep in advance of their meeting, unless we have paid support staff to take care of these.

Marc.

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2013 11:56:20 -0500

>>>>> "Thomas" == Thomas Narten <[email-masked]> writes:
    Thomas> IMO, what is missing is operational Best Practices. We seem
    Thomas> to be lacking them (are any written down?) And we don't
    Thomas> follow them consistently, especially from one WG to
    Thomas> another. Many of the problems I see with remote
    Thomas> participation facilties have to do not with the technology
    Thomas> per se, but with lack of proper training and advance
    Thomas> testing. I get the general sense that getting the remote

+5.

I am setting a deadline for slides for IETF86 for my WG, and I will be
doing a unified slide deck.  I might allow text on a slide to be
updated the day before... but no slides, no speak.

---

From: Doug Barton <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:05:06 -0800

On 02/07/2013 08:56 AM, Michael Richardson wrote:
| I am setting a deadline for slides for IETF86 for my WG, and I will
| be doing a unified slide deck.

Does that mean all slides from all presentations in 1 deck? If that's
offered as a bonus feature, no problem. But it's more likely than not
that people would be interested in saving the slides from some
presentations, but not all.

Doug

---

From: Eliot Lear <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2013 18:07:23 +0100

Hi Thomas,

> advance, not at the start of the meeting.

I appreciate this point of view, but at what point do we mean that a
face to face is really intended to be that?  That is- if you can get the
facilities going, great.  If not, let's recall how many people are on
the IETF payroll in this process, especially when it comes to interims. 
That having been said, I think it would be great to have a best
practices guide or checklist as you suggest.  Forgive me if this sounds,
crass- it's not intended to be– but sending some text to kick things off
would be very helpful.

Eliot

---

From: Simon Pietro Romano <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2013 18:56:48 +0100

Hi Michael,

+1 for the deadline
- 1 for the unified slide deck: from my experience with Meetecho, this is not always a good idea, both because of the deck's dimensions and of the difficulties in automatically recognizing speakers' switches (e.g. for the recordings of the single presentations).

My 2 cents,

Simon

---

From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2013 10:06:36 -0800

> updated the day before... but no slides, no speak.

i know this will come as a shock to many, but some of us occasionally
choose to speak *without powerpoint*!!!!!

randy

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2013 10:41:24 -0900

On 2/7/13 3:46 PM, Thomas Narten wrote:
> lacking them (are any written down?) 

I started a page on the working group chairs wiki, and I know that
at least one other person has edited it.  However, that may be too
informal for what you're asking.
http://wiki.tools.ietf.org/group/wgchairs/wiki/RemoteParticipation

Melinda

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2013 20:17:07 -0500

>     presenter can be shifted from participant to participant as needed.

Can we *please* discourage the habit of treating IETF WG meetings as one 
series of PowerPoint presentations after another?   This makes the 
meetings much less productive.

The notion that there are supposed to be slides for each presentation, 
is IMO, a huge error.

Keith

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2013 22:05:04 -0500

>>>>> "Keith" == Keith Moore <[email-masked]> writes:
    Keith> Can we *please* discourage the habit of treating IETF WG
    Keith> meetings as one series of PowerPoint presentations after
    Keith> another?  This makes the meetings much less productive.

    Keith> The notion that there are supposed to be slides for each
    Keith> presentation, is IMO, a huge error.

It's not the slides that are the problem.  
It's the "presentation" itself.

If we could, I would organize the rooms in circular style, but it doesn't
scale to several hundred people.

(If there are slides, we need to make sure that they are received early,
in a vendor-neutral archival happy format, and can be distributed in
advance.)

---

From: joel jaeggli <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2013 19:23:11 -0800

On 2/11/13 5:17 PM, Keith Moore wrote:
> Can we *please* discourage the habit of treating IETF WG meetings as 
> one series of PowerPoint presentations after another?   This makes the 
If you have prepared materials for your segment of the agenda they 
should be available beforehand, full stop.

If you don't, then I imagine they won't be. you're depriving some of 
participants who may not be familiar with your work the opportunity to 
review what you want to discuss. but that's between you and your working 
group chairs.

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:28:06 -0900

> review what you want to discuss. but that's between you and your working

In theory they should have read any drafts that are on the
agenda.  I used to agree with Keith but I'm drifting more
towards feeling that particularly for remote participants (and
I'm saying this as someone who's done the remote participation
thing upwards of a dozen times) it's helpful to have a
summary of the issues under discussion.  Not every slide set
contains material you should have gotten from reading the
draft.  Some contain material you should have gotten from
reading the mailing list, but even so a summary of issues needing
attention/resolution is useful.

Melinda

---

From: Bob Hinden <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2013 19:46:36 -0800

Keith,

On Feb 11, 2013, at 5:17 PM, Keith Moore wrote:

> Can we *please* discourage the habit of treating IETF WG meetings as one series of PowerPoint presentations after another?   This makes the meetings much less productive.
> 
> The notion that there are supposed to be slides for each presentation, is IMO, a huge error.

I disagree.  The slides are a great help for non-native english speakers.

Bob

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2013 19:22:49 -0900

> I disagree.  The slides are a great help for non-native english

For better or worse I think that in this century slides have
become a medium for documentation rather than just presentation,
and so it's useful to be clear which is which.  Documentation is
good, presentation is generally (but not always) not a good use
of meeting time.

Melinda

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2013 23:29:46 -0500

On 02/11/2013 10:23 PM, joel jaeggli wrote:
>> one series of PowerPoint presentations after another?   This makes 
>> the meetings much less productive.
>>

Agree.   But perhaps "slides" are not, in general, the best kind of 
preparation?    Perhaps some brief notes consisting of a summary of the 
discussion topic and the major points to be made (perhaps from multiple 
points of view), with pointers to I-Ds or other relevant background 
documents, would be more appropriate?

Perhaps instead of talking about "presentations", this document should 
talk about "discussions"?

And perhaps instead of "Slide Sharing" the section should read something 
like:

3.4. Sharing of Briefing Material

Each speaker is strongly encouraged to prepare material to brief meeting 
participants about the topic to be discussed during his or her meeting 
segment.   Such a briefing should generally be less than two pages in 
length, and contain a summary of the topic to be discussed.   If there 
are multiple points-of-view that need to be reconciled, the briefing 
should attempt to capture these. When appropriate, the briefing should 
also include URLs of background material, such as RFCs or 
Internet-Drafts, that discussion participants should be familiar with.

Both local and remote meeting participants are strongly encouraged to 
download and read such material prior to the meeting.

Such materials should be in a format that everyone can read, e.g. HTML, 
or PDF.

If "slides" are used to provide visual aids for the discussion, these 
should also be made available for download prior to the meeting, in PDF 
format.

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2013 23:34:27 -0500

> I disagree.  The slides are a great help for non-native english speakers.
Let me back up a bit, because I don't think I stated my case strongly 
enough.

WG meetings should not, in general, be used for presentations.  They 
should primarily be used for discussions.   Presentations are largely a 
waste of precious WG time.

It is sometimes possible to prepare slides to help facilitate 
discussions.  But more often than not, the exercise of preparing slides 
encourages the speaker to fill up most or all of the available time with 
presentation material, leaving insufficient time for discussion of 
important questions.

I certainly agree that when presentations are made, the slides can be 
helpful to those who aren't so fluent in English.   My point is that 
presentations should be made only rarely.

Keith

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2013 23:45:57 -0500

Keith, you seem to be asking for something (discussion, wit no 
presentation), that has never happened in the WGs I have attended in the 
last 20 years.  Even the WG sessions that had the best, most useful, 
discussions, generally started with a presentation of the topic and issue.

Such initial presentation is usually strongly helped by clear bullets 
that everyone can follow to keep straight what is being discussed.

yes, many of the briefings (here and elsewhere) are people reading their 
slides.  yes, Powerpoint seems to make this worse in the way the tool is 
designed.  But the issues seems to me not to e slides.

If I had to guess, it is a combination of folks lacking confidence to 
discuss their material, folks doing what they have seen, and the 
patterns the tools encourage.  There almost certainly are other factors.

If you could assume that all 10 people you were talking to were fully up 
to speed on the topic, and had not lost context to the other 10 WG 
sessions they have been preparing for, and if we knew how to hold 
conversations effectively in rooms with 50+ people, and ...

Yes, we should be looking for encouraging, and thanking / rewarding, 
those people who use their slots to briefly present and then engage in 
conversation with the WG.

But lets not invent a fictional past in which this was some how natural, 
or even the norm.

Yours,
Joel

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2013 23:57:15 -0500

On 02/11/2013 11:45 PM, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
> presentation), that has never happened in the WGs I have attended in 
> the last 20 years.  Even the WG sessions that had the best, most 
> useful, discussions, generally started with a presentation of the 
> topic and issue.
>
> yes, many of the briefings (here and elsewhere) are people reading 
> their slides.  yes, Powerpoint seems to make this worse in the way the 
> tool is designed.  But the issues seems to me not to e slides.
>
> If you could assume that all 10 people you were talking to were fully 
> up to speed on the topic, and had not lost context to the other 10 WG 
> But lets not invent a fictional past in which this was some how 
> natural, or even the norm.
>
I remember IETF before PowerPoint.

Yes, people wrote topics or drew diagrams on transparencies that were 
projected for viewing within the room.   But (perhaps because preparing 
such materials was laborious) I don't recall the majority of WG time 
being devoted to reading things from those slides.  I do recall lots of 
fruitful discussions.

Keith

p.g. Admittedly, there were other differences when I first started 
participating in IETF.  e.g.  Most people didn't have laptops, and the 
rooms didn't have wireless Internet, so you didn't see meeting rooms 
full of people playing solitare, reading email, and/or browsing the web 
and not paying attention.

---

From: Doug Barton <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2013 22:15:31 -0800

On 02/11/2013 08:34 PM, Keith Moore wrote:
> helpful to those who aren't so fluent in English.

So what you're arguing for is better slides, more time devoted to 
discussion, and WG leaders taking a more active role in making sure that 
those 2 things happen.

In other words, the same 3 conclusions we came to the last several times 
this topic has been discussed.

So how about the people who are interested in this topic put their 
effort into helping to make those things happen instead of rehashing the 
discussion again.

Doug

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2013 09:05:39 -0800

> It's the "presentation" itself.

+1.

If a meeting has good structure, management and content, the presence or 
absence of slides doesn't matter.

If a meeting has poor structure, management or content, the presence or 
absence of slides doesn't matter.

Focus on the substance, not the form.  Slides are form.

d/

-- 
  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net