Subject: PWG> Re: IPP> Alta-Vista Forum: improved e-meeting approach for PWG, PMP, JMP, IPP, and SENSE? -R

From: Scott Isaacson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 04 Dec 1996 08:33:57 -0700

Ray,

Is it possible to view only unread postings as in some of the news group
interfaces? 

Maybe it is just the fact that I don't use it every day, but I did find some of
the forum interfaces difficult to follow.  I ended up posting a message to
the wrong issue and so forth.

Scott Isaacson

>>> Raymond Lutz <[email-masked]> 12/03/96 11:17pm >>>
MFPA has set up such forums, and can be made available to the PWG or
others
for free. Check out

http://www.mfpa.org/forums.html

Although this is only just recently set up, I think it fills the needs that
Tom refers to. The administrator of a "forum" can be anywhere, and
users
can subscribe to a forum, or even a single thread in the forum.

See the Projects Administration forum for links to the collaboration
research pages, where a gazillion different approaches are proposed. I
do
agree, Tom, that this will be the standard way of distributed collaboration
in the future.

One nice thing that isn't implemented yet in the MFPA forums is that after
subscribing to a forum, it is supposed to be possible to reply to any
posting notifications via email and have the email posted to the correct
thread as part of the web page. We are working on that one now, and it
should be fully operational soon.

-Raymond

At 05:31 PM 12/3/96 PST, Tom Hastings wrote:
>I've recently learned of a tool that Digital offers, called Alta Vista Forum.
>It provides a distributed structured electronic meeting capability.
>Its a web-based tool that allows threaded conversations to take place
>on any number of topics.  Any participant can add a new topic, such as
>an issue or a question or an action item.  Any participant can reply to
>the topic and a running thread is kept for each topic.  I used such a
>tool at Digital for 15 years called Notes (Lotus turned it into a product).
>Its great for keeping track of discussions.  Its much better than e-mail
>in which all of the threads are mixed together.  Each user can have
replies
>e-mailed to them if they want or not, their choice.
>
>I checked out http://www.alta-vista.software.digital.com and found that
>they offer an "electronic business tower", where you can go and "rent"
>rooms for such meetings, free for a month and can extend for another
month.
>Then if you like the results, you can have Digital setup a server for you
>(for a fee I haven't discovered).
>
>I suggest that someone from the PWG investigate the web page more
and
>propose that we try it out.  I suggest that each PWG project be a
separate
>forum and have a general PWG forum for general topics that affect all
projects.
>So we'd have separate PWG, PMP, JMP, IPP, and SENSE forums.
>
>If this is as good as it sounds, we might want to propose using it to the
>IETF for other WGs.
>
>Comments?
>
>Can we discuss briefly at tommorrow's IPP telecon?
>
>Thanks,
>Tom
>
>
>P.S. If its really good, we may be able to cut down on the number of
meetings.

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