Renewable Energy
Good practice at local and regional level

Media Conference held by CODEMA in Dublin, Ireland - 1 July 2002

Proceedings of main event, Brussels

Introduction

CODEMA organised a media conference in conjunction with the Managenergy's virtual conference on renewable Energy: Good practice at local and regional level. A small number of people were invited from the Sustainable Energy division of the Department of Public Enterprise. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, there were no attendees. It was decided to proceed with the web-based broadcast of the conference.

Technology used

• Laptop PC with windows XP
• Windows media player format
• 128Kps ISDN internet connection
• Projector

Comments on technology used

• The option to use Real Video format was not available which was unfortunate as this was our chosen format for the Sustainable Transport' conference. The video quality achieved with Media Player seems inferior to that of real player. The speaker could be clearly seen most of the time, however the video often lagged behind the audio and became jerky at times. Stopping and restarting playback fixed the problem, but there were also some problems connecting to the server, which caused more delays.
• Unfortunately, the slide show was not working with only one slide displayed throughout the morning session.
• At the start of the broadcast sound quality was not so good however this improved later on where the speaker could be clearly heard, with little or no distortion.
• Again, the lack of interactivity made it a bit more difficult to remain concentrated on the workshop. The options to submit questions would help.
• Sometimes, the video would become jerky or the audio would stop. This was often connected to the downloading of a new slide.

Problems and suggestions

• The quality produced by the Real Video format was far superior to that of Windows Media format. It should be used in favour of the Windows Media format.
• Although it was very helpful having the slides available onscreen, the process of downloading them had an adverse effect on the quality of the video. This problem could be solved by making the slides available for download (or caching) beforehand.
• The slides often lagged behind or went ahead of the video and audio. Again, this problem could possibly be fixed by making them available beforehand.
• Slides which did not have a soft copy (powerpoint file) were not shown.
• The lack of interactivity made it a bit more difficult to remain concentrated on the workshop. The options to submit questions would help.
• Sometimes, the video would become jerky or the audio would stop. This was often connected to the downloading of a new slide. Stopping and restarting playback fixed the problem.

Conclusion

Codema would recommend that

1. The option to choose between Windows Media Player and Real player be provided.
2. The slides should be made available beforehand or for caching.
3. Provisions should be made to make the conference more interactive.
4. Access to discussion panel should become more user-friendly.