Remote Viewing - Initial Information

(Look below for older posts, and to the right for links to useful sites and documents.)

We're going to try something new for the Oklahoma workshop presentations. We'll be sharing them over the web, so people who can't attend in person can still view them. There are a number of details that we're still working out, but here's the basic information. As things change, we'll update this blog.

We'll be using a web site named DimDim.com to host the "broadcast" of the meeting. If you want to view the sessions remotely, you'll use a web browser to open a special URL that takes you to our meeting on DimDim. Your browser window will display a number of things:

- A copy of the current presenter's slides, advancing along with the In-Room (IR) slides being shown.
- Audio of the IR presenters (and maybe other IR people) speaking.
- Video of the presenters (when possible).
- A chat window where you can type messages that will be visible to other remote viewers, and to the person running the IR broadcasting PC (separate from the presenter). If you have questions for the presenter, that person can relay them to the IR group so that we'll have a mix of remote and IR contributions to the discussion.

You should be able to connect and view the broadcast from any computer that meets the system requirements: a broadband internet connection, an up-to-date web browser (IE 6+ or Firefox 2+, Mac/Win/Linux), and Flash 9 installed. It's possible, though, that security settings on your own site's network (like firewalls) will block you from connecting.

Up to 50 different remote computers will be able to connect, so you can gather a group at your site to all watch together on one computer, or connect individually from your office.

We're planning to do a test broadcast a couple of weeks before the actual workshop, so that people who will want to connect remotely can try it out. That will let us all make sure our connections work, get settings adjusted, and practice communicating back and forth. The dry run will make it much easier to participate in the actual broadcast from Oklahoma.

If you think you might be interested in remote viewing (even possibly), please download and fill out the form at this link and email it to Claude Comeau so that we can let you know when the test meeting will be. We'll need to have email addresses for all potential remote viewers so we can send the URLs for the test and actual meeting connections.

It's the first time we're doing this, so we'll be filling in more details as we go, and some of the plans may change. As we get closer to the workshop dates, we'll post updates about the DimDim information (and other workshop news) here on the blog.

If you have questions, you can post a comment here or email brfss2009okc@gmail.com. Thanks.

Bob Cradock

First Blog Post

(Look below for older posts, and to the right for links to useful sites and documents.)

We'll be posting information about the August 2009 Workshop on this blog, to make it accessible to as many people as possible. This will be updated as things change.

Emails will still go out, but since we know it's not always foolproof to make sure those reach everyone, and it's confusing to sift through multiple messages to see what's current, the blog will help avoid that.

This is not an official CDC or BRFSS site, but just a way for the planning committee to communicate with people interested in the workshop.

Thanks, and if you have suggestions, you can post comments here or email brfss2009okc@gmail.com.

Bob Cradock