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The Access Grid (AG) is the ensemble of resources that can be used to support human interaction across the grid. It consists of multimedia display, presentation and interactions environments, interfaces to grid middleware, interfaces to visualization environments. The Access Grid will support large-scale distributed meetings, collaborative work sessions, seminars, lectures, tutorials and training. The Access Grid design point is group to group communication (thus differentiating it from desktop to desktop based tools that focus on individual communication). The Access Grid environment must enable both formal and informal group interactions. Large-format displays integrated with intelligent or active meeting rooms are a central feature of the Access Grid nodes. Access Grid nodes are "designed spaces" that explicitly contain the high-end audio and visual technology needed to provide a high-quality compelling user experience.
For a brief overview of an Access Grid Node, see our 2.5 minute movie (~26 Mbytes). Once the node is built and installed and operational functions are explored, it is time to participate in an AG event.
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An Access Grid Event is synonymous with real world events, where people gather to communicate with one another. On the Access Grid, they gather in a particular Virtual Venue, where participants can hear and see each other. In general, events can be either informal events or formal events. These two categories help us to distinguish the amount of preparation and structure needed to make the event a success for all those involved.
This lesson identifies the characteristics of informal and formal events. It
recommends the necessary personnel to ensure a productive and meaningful experience
for the participants of an event, whether informal or formal.
Access Grid events occur on a continuum from two-person, two-site meetings to large conferences with many participants from many sites. Some events are more formal or ceremonial than others. Informal events include small group collaborations, casual meetings and discussions, and demonstrations. Formal events include, but are not limited to: conferences or symposia with prepared presentations and invited speakers; professionally prepared short courses with participants who register in advance; official reviews by funding agencies.
The type of event dictates how the event is planned, prepared, and produced.
These are characteristics that separate informal and formal AG events:
| Characteristic | Informal Event | Formal Event |
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| Level of Coordination Required | Informal events are often casual and without written agendas. Some events require more planning than others, but not to the degree of a formal event. For informal events, participating sites coordinate their schedules, and may or may not reserve a virtual meeting space room in advance. | Formal events have a written agenda. They require much coordination between sponsoring institutions and are planned in advance. Usually formal events have schedules advertised by Web, email, and/or print, and sometimes require advance registration. Virtual meeting space is reserved in advance. |
| Technical Web Site | Usually not necessary. | Always required. Should include technical contact information for each participating site, the agenda, visual aid requirements, lecture materials, and public channel and back channel telephone numbers. |
| Numbers of Sites and Participants | Often fewer than four participating sites with one or more persons at each site. | May have large audiences, multiple speakers, four or more sites with a few or many participants at each site, including representatives from funding agencies, dignitaries, eminent members of the community, the public. |
| Visual Aids Needed | None to one PowerPoint slide set. | Multiple visual aids are used, including multiple Powerpoint slide sets from multiple presenters at multiple sites. |
| Rehearsal | Occasionally one rehearsal occurs just before the event. This depends on the level of AG operations experience at participating sites and/or the state of AG node (i.e., network reconfigurations, installation hardware, software upgrades). | Strongly advised. Multiple formal rehearsals are sometimes required with all participating sites. |
Examples and characteristics that distinguish an informal and formal event are provided on the previous page. The number of individuals supporting an event depends on the type of event. Below is a guideline to use when staffing events.
Your actual personnel needs will be strongly influenced by factors including the duration of your event, the size of the room in which your event takes place, and the pace of the agenda. Some of the roles described here may be combined, or may require more than one person.
| Recommended Personnel | Informal Event | Formal Event |
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| Producer of overall event (This individual is also the Producer at the main/host/organizing site). |  |
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| Producer(s) at each site. | |
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| Meeting Leader or Master of Ceremonies | (Meeting Leader) |
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| Technical Director | |
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| Floor Manager | |
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| Access Grid Node Operator | |
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| Node Operator Assistants | |
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| Coordinator who reserves the Node for use | |
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| Course or event registrar/educational materials coordinator | |
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| Participants at other Access Grid Nodes | |
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The next lesson
in this tutorial includes the roles and responsibilities for key personnel.
Most AG events are informal and some are formal. While the number of personnel required and the level of responsibility may vary between informal and formal events, basic functions do not. Through our experiences of producing formal events, we have gained insights that will assist you in running any event, whether informal or formal, smoothly and professionally.
This lesson provides an overview of the roles, skills, and responsibilities of those who coordinate a formal AG event:
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Producer | Manages the entire team |
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Director | Leads the technical team |
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Master of Ceremonies | Introduces presenters and keeps them on the time schedule |
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Floor Manager | Manages many of the details during the event |
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Technical Team (Node Operator and Assistants) | Operates the display control, audio control, network/transmit monitor, microphones, cameras, and presenter tools (i.e., PowerPoint and vnc) |
You will also learn about how the people working in these roles communicate with each other during an AG event.
Although an AG team resides at every location involved in the event, this lesson focuses on the site that hosts a large-scale formal event. Planning for a large-scale event should begin at least three months in advance.
After completing this tutorial, you will be able to:
The Producer is critical in ensuring the success of an AG event. There are basically two types of Producers:
The attributes and responsibilities of a Producer (regardless of whether he/she is a Lead Producer or site Producer) include:
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Before the Event, the Producer
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During the broadcast of the event, the Producer
During the event, the Producer should be positioned near the podium. |
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The Technical Team (Node Operators and assistants) operates the Display System, Audio System, and Video System; and monitors the network. The Technical Director is responsible for ensuring that the team works together to create a technically seamless AG event. The primary skills of the Technical Director include:
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Before the Event, the Technical Director is responsible for:
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During the event, the Technical Director:
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The Master of Ceremonies (MC) is the face and voice of the AG event. MC skills include:
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Before the event, the MC is responsible for:
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During the event, the MC:
What happens when there is a question from a distant site? One way to manage this is described below. For more detailed discussion of this topic, including other methods for receiving remote questions, see "Beginner's Guide to Facilitating Interactive Communications on the Access Grid," located at http://www.accessgrid.org/agdp/guide/facilitation.html.
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The Floor Manager directs the presenters while they are speaking and is required to possess the following skills:
The Floor Manager role is essential if your AG node is in a large space (for example, an auditorium).
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Before the event, the Floor Manager should work with the Technical Director to ensure the presentation materials are functional, and if necessary, make appropriate changes to materials. |
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During the event, the Floor Manager ensures that the speakers are prepared when it is their turn to present. While presenting and when necessary, the FM communicates with the speaker and MC using cue cards.
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Node operators and assistants will be required for many tasks. Depending on the size and scale of the event, you may want to have an individual operator focus on each of the following:
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Display Screen
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Back of Room
Key:
How do distant sites maintain communication during an AG event?
or text chat and telco), the Technical
Director should carry a cell phone or pager.Communications within the room are important as well. If your event is taking place in a large venue, you may wish to equip your node operations team with headset radios, or ensure that all of them have easy access to the text back channel.
The Access Grid Node Technical Experiences lesson teaches you about:
When preparing for an AG from a technical perspective, it's always good to learn from the experiences of others.
To prepare for an AG event, it's critical that you meet and work with the management and technical personnel in your AG production, especially if it is to be formally prepared and will have an outside audience. Here are some helpful tips:
An effective AG event requires an awareness of what's going on around you. To increase this effectiveness, learn how to:
What you should do:
and any other back channel.
To move a window to the Display Screen, open up the appropriate thumbnail from vic, adjust the size, then drag it to the Display Screen. Remember that displaying windows on the Display Screen is not the same as Microsoft Windows®.
Make sure you think about:
Have a backup hard disk:
Have spare parts:
To avoid any Access Grid systems security problems, remember to:
Again, to avoid any technical problems during the AG event, provide solutions to potential disaster:
and/or text chat
The Access Grid Node Technical Experiences lesson taught you how to:
Running an effective AG event requires planning and preparation.
This part of the Tutorial provides helpful hints for maximizing the success of the event and minimizing its risk. It examines the following topics:
and/or text chat to Communicate During an EventIn the long run, most meetings held on the AG will not require rehearsal - the technology will be suitably advanced allowing meeting participants to walk in, settle down with their laptops and/or other personal devices, and participate in much the same way that they'd do for face-to-face meetings.
However, even face-to-face meetings sometimes require a certain level of preparation, and even rehearsal, depending on the event's size, complexity, and nature. At the current stage of AG development, we find that many of our events benefit from some sort of rehearsal.
The sort of "rehearsal" we refer to is more of a technical dry run. In most cases, it is not necessary for meeting participants to attend the rehearsals. However, if some of the people giving presentations during your event have not had the opportunity to see the AG before, or have seen it but not used it for presentations, they may find it helpful to attend a technical rehearsal and perhaps give a short presentation.
Generally, it's a good idea to rehearse meetings that fall into one or more of the following categories:
On the other hand, we do not generally find it necessary to rehearse meetings that fit the following descriptions:
Rehearsal for meetings is largely agenda-driven. For example, if the meeting
includes dppt , VNC, and a data stream piped out of your CAVE, you'll want to
test all during the course of your rehearsals.
If your meeting has extremely low fault-tolerance, you may be planning to use a network/telco audio bridge, or unicast/multicast network bridge. In either of these cases, we suggest that all participating sites practice switching back and forth among the bridges during the rehearsal to ensure that operators are sufficiently familiar with these technologies and can make changes smoothly during the meeting.
We also suggest ensuring that all audio and video functions are working smoothly.
It is generally important that the operators who attend the rehearsals are the same operators who will participate in the actual meeting; rehearsals are as much of a training exercise as they are a debugging tool.
After you've decided whether and how to rehearse, you should also have a sense of how much rehearsal time is necessary. If your rehearsal involves more than simple tests to ensure that audio and video functions are operating normally, we suggest rehearsing at least a day in advance. Sometimes you will need multiple rehearsals.
In extremely rare cases of high-complexity, low-fault tolerant events, months of rehearsal are needed (e.g., Alliance Chautauquas and SC Global.)
It is better to schedule too many hours of rehearsal than too few; you can always cut the rehearsals short or cancel them if they are unneeded.
Following are a few examples of the rehearsal strategies used by various events:
An AG node is only as useful as the interactions it enables across the AG. We've found that, at this point in AG development, it is essential that operators communicate throughout meetings to ensure smooth operations. We generally refer to these communications as "the backchannel" and use a text channel and/or telephone to enable them.
The text channel (either moo or text chat ) is the vehicle for our primary backchannel communications. It allows
efficient communication without disrupting the meeting. It's easy to post information
that may be needed during the meeting, such as requests for advice from other
operators or information about what's coming next in the meeting. Also, since
the text discussions stay available in the buffer, you can easily "scroll back"
to read conversations you may have missed (for example, restarting a stalled
application or assisting your local meeting participants).
When an event involves multiple operators at an individual site, we have found it extremely useful to have all of these operators paying attention to the text channel. It has also often been helpful to have other staff involved in the event available on the moo (e.g., Producer, Technical Director, Floor Manager, and/or logistical staff).
The AG team also uses the moo to discuss technical problems and troubleshoot a solution. For example, when experiencing multicast problems, the team can communicate with one another to determine what the problem is without interrupting the flow of the presentation. In addition, AG team members at each site (both host and remote) use the moo to manage the node, ensuring that all of its components are working correctly.
When you enter a Virtual Venues meeting room (such as the Lucky Labrador or Full Sail room), the tkMoo client on your Display Computer is automatically routed to a moo room corresponding to that Virtual Venues room. This is the location recommended for backchannel conversations for meetings in that room.
Help files are available within the moo, and other operators are generally happy to help you find your way around.
The following is a list of best practices to consider when running an AG event:
To minimize risk in working on large-scale AG networking events:
Other things to consider when preparing for an AG event include:
Finally, make sure you have back-up plans for the AG event:
Running an effective AG event requires planning and preparation.
The Access Grid Node: Minimizing Risk lesson explored:
After completing this section of the tutorial, you will be able to:
When marketing an AG event, you'll use many of the same skills and materials you'd use for marketing any other sort of event. The key difference, of course, is that with an AG event, participants require access to an AG node, as well as the support of appropriate staff at that node.
There are many possible ways to approach this task. We'll focus here on two: Recruiting participating sites; and relying on participants to ensure they have appropriate AG access.
Regardless of which approach you choose, it's absolutely essential that all communications about your event clearly include the time zone in all references to the dates and times of the event. In addition, it's a nice touch to include the time in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). A useful time zone converter is located at http://www.timezoneconverter.com/.
Recruiting Participating Sites
Many events begin their outreach activities by recruiting AG sites to serve as hosts to their local communities. This can be done through one-on-one networking in the AG community, and by sending a Call for Participating Sites to AG email lists such as ag-tech@mcs.anl.gov, and accessgrid@mcs.anl.gov. The Call for Participating Sites should include information on the topic of the event, the dates and times of the event and any related test cruises and rehearsals, and technical and administrative contacts.
This approach is recommended for events which require substantial technical preparations.
Once those sites have agreed to participate, announcements can be sent to potential participants, including the list of sites at which one may attend the event. These general announcements can be sent to the AG email lists listed above, as well as any other venues through which you would normally announce events in your field. Participating sites may also wish to send such announcements through the normal venues in their local communities as well.
If you are using this approach, the registration form for your event should include a way for the participant to select from a list of participating AG sites. Sending the current registration statistics to participating sites will allow them to make any appropriate logistics arrangements.
Relying on Participants
If it is safe to assume that your event's participants have access to AG nodes, you may wish to rely on them to make their own arrangements for access to AG nodes and the help of appropriate support staff.
It is important to word your announcement very carefully. You should not imply that any and all AG nodes are available for your event; there may, of course, be many nodes which are unavailable for various reasons. Instead, you should use language such as this: "Participants are responsible for ensuring that they have use of a well-functioning AG node, as well as the support of appropriate technical staff."
Using this approach, you would simply send your event announcement to the AG mailing lists mentioned above, as well as any other venues through which you would normally announce events in your field.
If you are using this approach, the registration form for your event should include a way for the participant to indicate at which AG site they plan to attend. You may wish to periodically review the list of these sites with your AG technical support staff; their plans may be influenced by this list if more than 10 sites, or a large number of new sites, are planning to attend.
It is important to evaluate AG events to maintain user satisfaction and event production quality. AG event evaluation is similar to evaluating other learning events, except that the participants are geographically distributed, and the participating sites may have different ways of implementing AG technology. Participants' experience may vary considerably from location to location, so it is important to design evaluation forms to fit the audience .
Because event participants are geographically distributed, plan your method for distributing evaluation forms in advance. You may create a web-based evaluation form. If you do so announce the URL during the event and send participants an email reminder the day after the event.
If you do not have email addresses for all participants, ask organizers at participating sites to distribute paper evaluation forms during the event, collect them afterwards, and send them to you by postal mail or fax. In either case, do plan ahead.
The following is a short questionnaire you might use in your evaluation form, in addition to your questions regarding the content of the AG event. You may perform statistical analyses on your results (e.g., mean, medium, mode of responses.)
Please rate the following for Access Grid (AG) event (name, date, location).:
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| Facility was conducive to learning |
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| Presenter A was clearly visible |
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Be aware of what
you want to see and hear and what you actually do see and hear. Be aware
of what remote AG sites are seeing and hearing at all times.