# Presentation: 185423

## Communicating Effectively over the Access Grid

- Mary Fritsch, Argonne National Laboratory

## Introductions

- Always have your moderator acknowledge and introduce all nodes in an AG meeting.

## The Access Grid (AG)

- Group-to-group collaboration across high-performance networks
- Individual site installations often called “nodes”
- Often used to support large-scale distributed meetings, collaborative work sessions, seminars, lectures, tutorials and training
- Large events mean lots of planning and prep
- Smaller and/or less formal AG events often require little if any planning and prep

## A Team at Each Node

- All staff work closely together
- This is as true for speakers as for tech staff
- This is true both of staff at a specific node, and staff at all participating nodes
- Text-based backchannel (MOO) is used for communication among staff
- Know all your technical contacts

## Who’s Your Audience?

- Remember that your “virtual” audience is very much real.  In some cases remote audiences vastly outnumber the audience which is physically in the same room with you.
- How is giving an Access Grid presentation different than just talking to a group of people in a room?

## Advice for Speakers

- Maintain confidence; maintain camera “eye contact”
- Work with your node’s technical staff to ensure the camera is placed well
- _Speak clearly and slowly _
- Work with your technical staff to learn appropriate microphone use
- Watch for cues from your audience

## Inform

- Pause if anything disrupts the event.  Be sure to inform your “virtual” audience what is happening
- Work closely with your node’s support staff if problems of any kind arise
- Your node’s support staff can convey messages to remote audiences through their node’s staff (also by using back channels)

## Guidance

- Find ways to repeat who you are, your topic, and where you are speaking from to include all “late-comers”
- 	*For somebody who has never been exposed to the AG it may be confusing to walk into a node with a talk in progress.*
- When talking over the AG announce your name and site you are speaking from

## Planning Ahead

- When choosing a way to facilitate your meeting, ask yourself:
- What is the format of this event?
- How many people and sites will be participating?
- How is this group accustomed to interacting?
- Which technique best fits my personal style?
- Be persistent in gaining this information.

## Questions Anyone

- At the beginning of an event, let your event participants know how you’ll be handling questions and comments
- Three recommended techniques:
- Just Speak Up
- Raising Hands
- Passing the Floor

## Passing the Floor

- Recommended for large, formal events
- One AG site in each event is considered the “main” site
- Usually the site with the main speaker or largest audience
- Sites which are not “main” are “remote”
- Each site needs a moderator or Master of Ceremonies (MC)
- A moderator or speaker may double as an MC

## Passing the Floor

- At any given time, one site has “the floor”
- The MCs work together to pass the floor around to each site in turn
- Each site needs (their own) strategy for local management of questions
- Raising hands
- Standing in line at a microphone
- etc, etc. . .

## Many Thanks

- The many authors of: _[http://www.accessgrid.org/agdp/](http://www.accessgrid.org/agdp/)_
- Jennifer Teig von Hoffman, Boston University
- Sherine Mansour, Sheridan College
- Ariella Rebbi, Boston University

## Questions??