#14 Chat

I can see a tremendous mount of potential using these tools. As a public service librarian, I can see obvious advantages in communicating with patrons, if a simple, effective, and respectful protocol was established and easily accessible through our library web sites or as part of a larger learning management system on campus.

I particularly see the advantage of the YackPack service in conferencing. It still seems pretty static to me and only slightly improves on the core problem for me with phone conferencing, which is that it is difficult to be productive without being able to observe and interpret body language which not only communicates about issues being discussed, but more importantly influences the behavior of participation for those involved, i.e. who dominates a conversation, what clues are communicated that allow the group to equally distribute verbal participation, all that kind of thing. It certainly helps to have a speaker's image highlighted on the screen, but I wonder if that configuration of participants would look like popcorn popping all over itself in some of the UC systemwide committee meetings, in which it is extremely difficult to get a word in, or maybe in a brief period of time it would help regulate people's consideration for one another. Hopefully.