NEC Meeting

[NIN]

A smartphone can stream, sir.

Doesn't anyone in the NEC own a smartphone? I hope one or two does.

You did not just legitimately suggest streaming a meeting with a smartphone, did you?

I did.

No stream < bad quality stream

The quality isn't actually that bad, at least when I tried it (6 months ago). The phone didn't even have a good camera, and it came out pretty good. Something with a 720/1080p camera would probably do even better.


OR you could tether a laptop to your phone. Probably be your best bet. Tethering would work perfectly. Just download a free/cheap app, connect to the hotspot and WAMMO you have internet. Then you just use a camera of some sort, attach to live stream.

So:
Acquire smartphone
Download tethering (or personal hotspot) app
Connect with laptop
Connect camera to livestream
Stream
#Profit

And you did this for 2-6 hrs with no interruption, quality loss, etc?

It had acceptable video at the other end?  Acceptable audio? 

I'm kind of thinking "not"

Streaming video from your phone for 10 minutes != live-streaming a meeting.

[RADIOMAN015]

Any organization that depends on its membership to do anything should be very interested in keeping them informed of what is going on and in obtaining their support for decisions that are made.  Those that think otherwise may have some problems.

Many of us know that you are also an active member of the USCG Auxiliary and a frequent, putting it mildly, poster on their board. The USCG Aux does not publish the agenda for any of its National Meetings. Until very recently it posted nothing, no minutes etc about the results of those meetings. Recently, the USCG, not the Aux, at least posted the 4 proposals the Aux made to the USCG and the USCG's actions on those - but still no detailed minutes from the Aux like CAP does.

Yet, you make no statements or complaints about the complete lack of transparency and communication in the USCG Aux and find fault with the much greater transparency of CAP. In the future, I am going to look forward to your comments on the Aux board regarding Auxie governance issues. It does appear you have different standards for two very similar organizations.

..snip..snip..

3.  Finally, in the CG Aux I have as a final backstop the Coast Guard who can generally be trusted to do the right thing and to act as a check on any crazy ideas that might be put forward.  The AF only has a very limited degree of control over such things in CAP.  While I certainly didn't have a say in who those CG leaders are, I do trust them to do what is right for the Aux and the CG.  The AF hasn't shown a consistent ability to provide the same level of oversight to CAP (witness how the corporate service uniform fiasco played out).  I think the CG cares enough about the Aux to do the right thing -- I'm not even sure CAP-USAF really cares about what is good for CAP and the AF. 

I would agree with you that the Air Force (CAP-USAF), seems to carefully pick what they want to control with CAP, and AF Instruction (AFI) 10-2701, para 1-4 (1.4.3 Corporate Activities) seems to have some limitations, primarily oversight is on the use of government funds.    HOWEVER, the implementation of the Board of Governors structure AFI 10-2702, does control/oversee the corporate activities, and the USAF does have a strong presence on the board.

Lets face it CAP as an organization has to depend upon its'  "motivated" volunteers in units below wing level to get any mission accomplished.    With all the top level meetings and money being spent on this travel, I've yet to see a comprehensive long, medium, & short term goals established and communicated to the general membership.  Surely, we all want to be on the same page and work towards these goals.   From my standpoint it is very strange that this simple act of transparency can't be accomplished.

As far as the general membership having a voice/input, I would think something as simple as implementation of a formal suggestion program, administered at the wing level with appropriate Regions & National HQ level involvement, wouldn't require that much work or staffing.   The USAF has had such programs with different names for many years, and some great ideas have been implemented that saved money and or time.
RM

[RRLE]

1.  In comparison to CAP, the CG Auxiliary leadership has a remarkable degree of self-restraint in terms of what they propose.  While they may have a proposal every now and again that seems frivolous, it isn't the norm like it is with CAP.  They only proposed 4 things this year, which is probably only 10-20% of the proposals in front of CAP's leadership in any given year.

They only proposed 4 things that made it to the USCG for further consideration. Since there is no published agenda nor published minutes, no one outside the select few who were there know how much stuff was on their plate. 

2.  CG Aux's leaders are chosen in a democratic fashion in which I actually have a say,

Assuming you are not a higher elected officer, the only officers you have a direct say in are your local (flotilla) level officers. For those who don't know, the current sitting national and district officers elect the new national officers. Then the sitting district and division officers elected officers elect the next district officers. Then the sitting divison and flotilla officers elect the new division offiers. Only after all the incumbents are voted up or out (usually up), do you get to vote for the lowest guy on the totem pole. It will be at least a year before he gets to vote only for his superior officers. It may be a democracy of sorts but it is designed to thwart any innovation from and input from below.

3.  Finally, in the CG Aux I have as a final backstop the Coast Guard who can generally be trusted to do the right thing and to act as a check on any crazy ideas that might be put forward.

Except for a very recent killing off of yet another ribbon, the USCG has largely rubber stamped whatever the Aux leadership handed them. It did not kill off the Aux request to create 2 awards higher then the Aux's highest bravery award. It did not stop the Aux (a few years ago) from changing the traditional colors and shapes of the national officers pennants and burgees etc.

And as has come up often on the other board, the USCG will almost always back the leadership against a member in any sort of disciplinary action.

All that being said, I do think the Aux leadership should vet their draft proposals to the membership for comment.

We agree on that at least.

In theory at least, I think I would trade the Aux's fake democracy for CAP's openness any day of the week. A Bilge Mouse in either organization has very little say over who their national leaders are but at least CAP gets to know what they are up to.

An organization has a problem , when its management style, as the Aux's is,  is referred to either as Mushroom Management (keep them in the dark, feed them fecal matter and expect them to produce) and/or Black Hole Managment (suck everything in but let nothing out). And I didn't coin either of those expressions.

[Eclipse]

Lets face it CAP as an organization has to depend upon its'  "motivated" volunteers in units below wing level to get any mission accomplished. 

Thank you for that insight.

In other "news", water is wet, fire is hot, and gravity is a downer...

[Eclipse]

Streaming video from your phone for 10 minutes != live-streaming a meeting.

Not to mention the economies of scale.

Most video conference systems like Skype, etc., depend on the originator's bandwidth and processor for the entirety of the stream, the math isn't quite exponential, but it is geometric, and generally kills the average consumer upstream by the 3rd or 4th user.

There's also no need for real-time monitoring.  Nothing they do is time-critical, nor of such importance to the general membership that their
decisions will precipitate immediate action downstream.

Just like with Congress, the normal activities of these types of bodies are hours of boredom punctuated by a few seconds of anything of interest.

[Nathan]

This thread is kind of funny to me, because it reminds me of all the times as a cadet when I would get irritated that I wasn't being let in on something the higher-ups were doing. For instance, my first time as a flight sergeant, I would get irritated that staff meetings were still closed off to me (my flight commander went), since I considered myself entitled to be there.

The truth was that I just wanted to know what happened behind closed doors, and being on the wrong side of the closed door was frustrating. I didn't have any valuable input, nor would I have had any real part in planning the activities they were planning during their staff meetings. And it would become pretty apparent later on what they were planning, since they were doing squadron business. I would get notified by my chain of command of the information relevant to me. But the fact is that I just wanted to KNOW, because I was impatient and curious.

Just like a lot of the people in this thread are just impatient and curious. There is ZERO reason to believe there is anything sinister going on at a meeting of the higher-ups of a volunteer organization at this point in time. Yet, people try to make their natural curiosity seem more justified by accusing the lack of real-time communication with the general membership as evidence of some sort of cover-up. I highly doubt that most of the people making these arguments actually believe this. Like I was when I was a younger cadet, it's just a natural curiosity and hurt feelings at being left out of the grown-up table.

[flyingscotsman]

Livestream.com & USTREAM.com are inexpensive for accounts that allow restrictions on viewership, high quality, and support a variety of video capture methods. They are the ones delivering the video content to the viewers, requiring only just enough bandwidth at the site to get one stream up to the service, this makes it very scalable. Livestream.com even offers a new device that connects directly to an HD camcorder (even slides into the accessory shoe mount) and will upload either using WiFI or a USB 3G/4G modem. Expense and lack of quality aren't the challenge here, as there are many more services than the two I just mentioned. I get the impression that NHQ doesn't believe there is any real demand to watch this stuff.

[Extremepredjudice]

A smartphone can stream, sir.

Doesn't anyone in the NEC own a smartphone? I hope one or two does.

You did not just legitimately suggest streaming a meeting with a smartphone, did you?

I did.

No stream < bad quality stream

The quality isn't actually that bad, at least when I tried it (6 months ago). The phone didn't even have a good camera, and it came out pretty good. Something with a 720/1080p camera would probably do even better.


OR you could tether a laptop to your phone. Probably be your best bet. Tethering would work perfectly. Just download a free/cheap app, connect to the hotspot and WAMMO you have internet. Then you just use a camera of some sort, attach to live stream.

So:
Acquire smartphone
Download tethering (or personal hotspot) app
Connect with laptop
Connect camera to livestream
Stream
#Profit

And you did this for 2-6 hrs with no interruption, quality loss, etc?

It had acceptable video at the other end?  Acceptable audio? 

I'm kind of thinking "not"

Streaming video from your phone for 10 minutes != live-streaming a meeting.

I did it for an hour. The feed was of acceptable quality. Not the best, but ok.

Livestream.com & USTREAM.com are inexpensive for accounts that allow restrictions on viewership, high quality, and support a variety of video capture methods. They are the ones delivering the video content to the viewers, requiring only just enough bandwidth at the site to get one stream up to the service, this makes it very scalable. Livestream.com even offers a new device that connects directly to an HD camcorder (even slides into the accessory shoe mount) and will upload either using WiFI or a USB 3G/4G modem. Expense and lack of quality aren't the challenge here, as there are many more services than the two I just mentioned. I get the impression that NHQ doesn't believe there is any real demand to watch this stuff.

This. You can use a phone, create a hotspot, and stream.


NHQ isn't interested in streaming, if they were, there are tons of ways they could.

[caphornbuckle]

NHQ isn't interested in streaming, if they were, there are tons of ways they could.

Looking at how the viewership has been in the past, the majority of us aren't interested either.  I'm one of them.  I've got more important things to worry about.

[The CyBorg is destroyed]

For one thing, I find meetings, of almost any sort, dead boring.  Even at my church I tend to think "oh, cripes, not again," when the pastor announces a voter's meeting.  He's retiring and we have to call a new one, and those meetings are going to be about as exciting (to me) as watching ice melt.

I come from the days when the only real organ of information was CAP News, and LO's/LNCO's.  Those are gone.

As a former IT guy, I also tend to get very impatient with hiccupping streaming video, whether the result of poor connection on the broadcaster's part or outmoded equipment on my part.

I guess what I'm saying is that I am not passionate one way or another about the NEC Meeting being streamed...but you can bloody well better believe I want to know the results, with the whys and wherefores of such results.

The only thing I can really interest myself in watching through streaming video is sessions of the Australian Parliament, very lively and sometimes quite profane!

As a former CG Auxie, I can agree with almost all of RiverAux's commentary on how they do it v. how we do it.  One extremely important factor is that the Coast Guard is much more directly involved than the AF is with us.  The Chief Director Auxiliary is an active-duty, four-piston-ring Captain.

http://www.uscg.mil/hq/cg3/cg3pcx/cginfo/chdiraux.asp

Active Duty and Reserve Coasties are also much more familiar with their Auxiliary than the AF is with us...and I don't buy the argument that the reason for that is because the CG is a smaller service.

The AF only has a very limited degree of control over such things in CAP.

Or interest.

The AF hasn't shown a consistent ability to provide the same level of oversight to CAP (witness how the corporate service uniform fiasco played out).  I think the CG cares enough about the Aux to do the right thing -- I'm not even sure CAP-USAF really cares about what is good for CAP and the AF. 

My thoughts exactly, except that I would change "ability" to "interest."  They could show much greater oversight than they do, but they choose not to...again, the "benign neglect" syndrome.

I sometimes wonder what the reason is for having CAP-USAF to begin with...it seems we could do just as well reporting directly to AFRC, as has been mooted.

[a2capt]

I'd be happy with them just saving it, and posting it promptly. I don't need to see it when it's happening, it's not always convenient. But if they save it, and post it promptly that shows an earnest effort at transparency with a balance against frugality.

Watching it live ... it isn't like I can do anything if I disapprove anyway ;-) Short of being in the room and screaming like the British House of Commons... and all they would do is drag me out anyway. Not saying I'm gonna do that, but that's about as effective as anyone is going to be. So, why make a stink.

But the excuse "only 6 people looked at it" .. isn't right either. It's like voting. They need to provide enough ballots at each polling place for every registered voter plus spoils, walk ins, provisionals, etc- even though they know better than heck that if 19% show up they're doing darn good.

In this case, post the material, whatever it is, since they've decided to take the initiative at maintaining and fostering transparency.

Like the various committees locally here, sure - they post the agenda .. outside the city council chambers, the morning before the meeting. This is 2012. The Town Crier is Dead. We don't do things like that anymore. They're probably arrest the guy for disturbing the peace. You can't tell me that they didn't have these agendas done a few days before. Post them on the internet.

NHQ does a good job of making the agenda's available. Municipal governments could learn from them. OTOH, many municipal governments post their meetings within 24-48 hours. Save it to a drive, add the beginning text to it, start at the opening hammer, and thats it. There shouldn't need to be any editing. After all, you're posting the meeting. Not a show.  The difference here? Limited manpower, and many volunteers. A lot of stuff doesn't get done as fast necessarily. But I bet if they put out the word in the locality for someone to assist with cropping those raw files into meetings against notes/filenames that there would be a taker or two.

[lordmonar]

But the excuse "only 6 people looked at it" .. isn't right either. It's like voting. They need to provide enough ballots at each polling place for every registered voter plus spoils, walk ins, provisionals, etc- even though they know better than heck that if 19% show up they're doing darn good.

No....it is more like CSPAN.....no mandate to have and if it does not work/they can't pay for it/no one watches it....there is zero change in the way they do buisness.

Voting is your RIGHT!  So they have to provide you the opprotunity to do so.

It is NOT your right to sit in on the BoG, NEC, NB, Wing Staff meeting, Squadron Staff meeting.......so no one has to provide you with the ability to do so.

NOW.......everyone is encouraged to attend and watch......that is part of transparancy.....but that does not mean CAP has to do anything to facilitate it beyond providing the opportunity to come and watch.

[NIN]

NHQ isn't interested in streaming, if they were, there are tons of ways they could.

Looking at how the viewership has been in the past, the majority of us aren't interested either.  I'm one of them.  I've got more important things to worry about.

Thats a fact: I watched the NB streamed a couple times.  A) I was at work; B) It was so boring that I kept texting a wing commander I knew just to watch him react on screen.  The next time a "streaming national CAP meeting" was announced, I said "Yeah, seen it. Bored to tears by it... Next!"

Seriously. Watching paint dry is positively "second-by-second action" compared to streaming a CAP meeting.


There may be some of you who can peel yourselves away from CSPAN and your scanners tuned to your local PD & Fire dispatch freqs to watch what amounts to a bunch of old guys sitting in a room in uniforms trying to look interested in a subject they could not care less about.  But that ain't me.  And judging by the numbers, 99% of the membership feels that way too.

Two things you should never watch being made: Sausage and the law.  CAP regulations and policy by an echelon above reality is a close third.

[NCRblues]

watch what amounts to a bunch of old guys sitting in a room in uniforms trying to look interested in a subject they could not care less about. 

Maybe that is one of the problems. A passionate debate on heartfelt issues is way more interesting to watch than 80 year old men arguing about the next ribbon color.


Maybe the NB/NEC needs some new blood, younger more energetic members who still have the passion for all things CAP...

[Spaceman3750]

Maybe the NB/NEC needs some new blood, younger more energetic members who still have the passion for all things CAP...

That's great, but most young folks south of 60 are working professionals who can't take 9 weeks off a year for CAP. There are, of course, exceptions but as a general rule the young folks are busy putting food on the table and going to piano recitals.

[NIN]

Maybe the NB/NEC needs some new blood, younger more energetic members who still have the passion for all things CAP...

That's great, but most young folks south of 60 are working professionals who can't take 9 weeks off a year for CAP. There are, of course, exceptions but as a general rule the young folks are busy putting food on the table and going to piano recitals.

Sadly, you are correct

[CAP_truth]

Why can we just have it recorded and placed on CAPChannel as a mpeg or avi for download orviewing when members have time. Real time is good for members who are not employed or during time when they can watch due to time zones. I for one like to observe what is going on with our organization and what decisions are being made by higher headquarters. Waiting for the posted minutes of the meeting takes 2 to 3 months after the meeting.

[Ned]

Waiting for the posted minutes of the meeting takes 2 to 3 months after the meeting.

True enough, which is why we have made a change to address the issue of timely notification of our members and stakeholders about what actually occured during the meeting.

Rather than waiting for draft or approved minutes, we are placing an "Executive Summary" of the meeting on line shortly after the meeting.  Of course, the official minutes are also posted (and maintained as corporate records), but as you point out, the official approval process does take time.

Here's the Executive Summary prepared for the Winter Board meetings.  The NEC Executive Summary should be posted this week.

Once again, I am proud of the efforts made by the staff and volunteer leadership to get the information out in a timely and effective manner.

[manfredvonrichthofen]

So does that meat here are no uniform changes?
If not... SWEET!!!

[a2capt]

The "auto correction fixes" are getting down right amusing. Almost as if it's being done on purpose.