FORUM for BRIEFING

Hi Sarah,

Thank you for a very good start. I think we were 20 all together today? I am sharing a screenshot that I took just at the beginning. I missed the end, so great to see that the history is available.

Answering your questions, I use chat at work all the time but especially when I want to receive a timely answer. So the immediacy of a chat and easiness of use is a big advantage to me. I am sure there are other advantages.

The text format can be limiting, but you found a way to over come it using Google presentation for sharing images. Then many chat tools have a native functionality of image sharing.

And as for other synchronous tools, finding suitable time for everybody to meet is sometimes a challenge. I hope the time of your next session suits even better to everybody schedules. :)

Looking forward to the next briefing.

Maja

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Dear all,

I see that you continued discussing after I left the chat. Unfortuntaley, I did see nothing from your discussions live, no images or so. May be that I made something wrong? Is a short description available how to handle the software?

Thank you for your efforts. Hopefully I can join the next Calmet online from the beginning.

Wilfried.

Hi Sarah,

For me, free form chat works well with just a few people, but when you have 20, as you did today, it can get pretty chaotic. However, the slides you provided and the questions you asked helped to focus discussion and comments, so it worked! I think for this kind of session, the more structure the better. I might even go so far as to write the question on each slide asking what you want people to look for. It might also be good to provide a table of contents at the start telling what each of the slides will offer. Just some ideas...

Nice job.

Patrick

Hello all!

Sarah, thank you so much for this interesting experiment!

I did not contribute yesterday in the chat, as I was very busy with a very urgent work. But I managed to have my work done and to understand the information, returning to read what`s new when I have a little time. That is what I found to be a great benefit of this kind of activity!

I mean, Vesa :-), that while I was doing my urgent work, I was at the same time able to monitor and keep up the discussion. It is the same way as I use Skype in my office only at chat mode :-)

I think it might be good for forecaster who can follow the briefing while they are on shift. For sure, they could not contribute a lot but they would get the information, or they can join the chart later after shift or when they have time. I wonder how long can this chat be opened for discussions?

For example, as we see the chat forecast was not so good – no showers at the last image of chat! :-) Could we return now to the chat and try to find what the reason of failure was?

In addition, it could be a good thing for such big country as Russia. At the end of October, we will have 11 time zones! Could you imagine how to do the live synchronous meeting at these conditions? Me not and it is still an opened question. The 24 hours opened chat room may be an answer but the problem is in moderating it and keeping in touch with other forecasters from different time zones.

 As for advantages:

1. My own pace of contribution, I can join and go out easily without losing information.
2. It do not take all my attention and time, for the intensive operational conditions, it is useful.
3. It is good idea for such big country as Russia with a lot of time zones.
4. It is very suitable for the shy people. I do know how it is hard to start talking to microphone, typing is better sometimes :-)
5. It is easy to jump between the images if you want to refresh or compare them. And as I understand it is easy for presenter to change or put new images in-fly.

As for challenges (maybe for me only):

1. It takes a lot of time (twice or three times then video/audio weather briefing). We all have a lack of time! :-)
2. I agree with Pat about a little bit chaotic atmosphere. Maybe it need more strong moderation to take all people attention and more clear structure and plan of briefing then for audio chat.
3. If it is more than 20 people (as it was yesterday), the messages of somebody entering chart or going away is a little bit annoying especially when you returning to read the discussion. I do know that it is good for moderator but it distracts the attention of participants.
4. I did not check all tools useful for chat briefing but so far seems to me it is not so easy for participants to drawn in a Google docs. Btw, do the participants need a Google registration to use Google docs?

Thanks again!

Regards,

Lara

Hi All,

I have gone ahead and summarized feedback and ideas for this tool. The idea is to share this mode of holding presentations which can be implemented in various ways as suggested and try to understand how it works by sharing ideas, looking at the advantages and challenges and further addressing these challenges. I shall attempt to address some of these challenges in our weather briefing for tomorrow but meanwhile, look at my summary, share more ideas and suggestions. 

See you tomorrow :-)

Regards,

Sarah Kimani

Hi Sarah, Thanks for your kind information as I missed the discussion. I will now check the web site