Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 12:35:36 -0500 To: pbs-demo@thequilt.net From: Mary Fran Yafchak Subject: Notes from PBS-Quilt call, 1/17/03 Cc: Mary Fran Yafchak Bcc: X-Attachments: Dear all, Below are the notes from our PBS-Quilt project planning call, with action items embedded throughout (so read in case your name is there :-)). Our next call will be: Friday, January 31, 12:30 p.m. EST 800-998-2462, code: 6305950 Important update on the very last action item (for me to draft an abstract for a track presentation at I2) - The more I've tried to do this, the more I feel we don't really have enough firm information to commit to a track presentation. There is typically a lot of contention for these spots and I wouldn't want to commit and take a chance on having to back out later on. Instead, I'd like to follow Ellen's suggestion that we consider a poster session. Unless others object, I will hold off on the presentation abstract (due tomorrow, so please let me know asap if you object!) and will plan to bring this up again when the call for poster sessions is out. -mfy PBS-Quilt Project Planning, 1/17/03 Attendees: Mary Fran Yafchak, SURA Dennis Haarsager, CPB/WA State U Jim Kutzner, PBS Thomas Edwards, PBS Greg Marks, MERIT David Felland, WPTV Ellen Vaughan, I2 Jim Marsteller, PSC Greg Petrowich, Univ Alaska at Fairbanks Steve Shroeder, Penn State 1) New addition: Jim Marstellar, Manager of the Pittsburgh GigaPoP, has joined the group. 2) Update from David F: Had conversation w/NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab re: MARS Rover project in particular and on working with NASA in general. NASA has lots of HD content and this first conversation went well and indicated good possibilities for accessing both live and stored information for NASA missions. Steve Vedro was also involved in this conversation and will continue to check into this and report back to the group. 3) More on HD cameras that could be used with the night sky: Greg's original information re: an appropriate HD camera was from an NTSC person who didn't think there were any HD cameras that would work. He had heard of a Japanese company that was working on that but didn't know of anything available in the near term. Ikagami was the company who made the camera that shot the aurora before but it was modified such that is definitely is not part of their regular product line. Can keep checking into this but, for now, still no HD aurora feed... [Note: Dennis Haarsager forwarded several related pieces of new information to the list just after the call.] 4) Status of UWisc Extension involvement: Steve Vedro was not on the call to tell us more about the already planned role/goals of UWisc Ext. **AI: MFY will follow-up with Steve directly. 5) On finding and working with K-12 partners: - Ellen V has preliminary info that two SEGP schools in WA are likely to have the connectivity necessary to participate (John Sanford International School and Seattle Community College). Louis Fox (I2/SEGP) has offered to continue looking for more if we can send some additional parameters for participation. - In addition, Greg Marks, a K-20 Quilt group member, said he could readily find 5 or 6 schools in Michigan with the bandwidth to receive compressed HDTV over IP. - Jim Marsteller is interested in involving K-12s in his area and will check with his connected schools as well. - Dennis noted that there are several school districts in the Pacific NorthWest GigaPoP area that as probably well-equipped to work with us. Not sure of the exact names but Kent, Washington and Seattle school districts are likely. - Criteria overall for a K-12 to participate: 15 - 20 Mbps available I2 bandwidth, 100BT local wiring, teacher(s) who are willing to with this content and report back to us on what they did. Also need a decoder and an appropriate display (HDTV, HD projector or multiscan computer monitor). For the decoder, I2 VBrick loaners are MPEG2 and may work for this. **AI: Ellen will ask Louis Fox to look for K-12s that meet the above criteria and will report back by/in next call. She will also check into the availability of the I2 V-Brick units to support a trial. **AI: Greg and Jim will research further into their K-12 possibilities and report back by/in next call. **AI: MFY will check w/Jacqueline Brown to see if she has any additional info/contacts for learning more about the schools Dennis mentioned. It was also recommended that we develop a "SWAT team" to work on getting content "far enough" into the schools to enable the educational investigation. For example, often the network overall works great but getting from one building to another is an issue. There was some discussion that the I2 E2E Initiative might have interest in being involved in this or could at least give us hints and tips for working on this as we proceed. **AI: Ellen will ask Eric or Matt w/E2E performance group to see if one of them would attend our next call. The timing of this project w/respect to the educational integration was also discussed. For instance, what are the eagles up to in March? Need to check w/David re: what content would be available and when with the eagle feed and also his other potential feeds (zoo cam, others as listed early on in these calls) so we can decide what is possible "education-wise". **AI: David - if you are reading these notes like you usually do :-), could you provide us with more info on that? Thought for the future: As an add-on to whatever may be happening with the HD stream, we could run a parallel stream of H.323 or other VC for interaction with an expert who can provide some commentary. 6) What to do about showing anything this Spring? The group has decided that there isn't time to pull anything meaningful together by Spring. Instead, we will concentrate on building a real K-12 project first (getting this content into the schools with enough time to explore and experiment with it) and then plan to "demo" (or, really, show a real project) at the I2 meeting in October. This does not rule out a presentation or possible poster session at the coming I2 meeting in April. (An update would also be provided as part of the Quilt presentation at I2). **AI: MFY will draft a presentation abstract to submit by due date of 1/24 and send this to the list. If the group agrees that it sounds feasible, will go ahead and submit for a track presentation.