mdlbear | Tres Gique on the River (Reply)

This is a follow-up to my upstream posts Tres Gique: Weekend of Win and Tres Gique: Weekend Wrap-up, this time from the point of view of the River posts.

A weekend is barely enough time for catching up with a friend. Fill it with 8 hours of rehearsal, a couple hours of commute time, lunch and snack breaks, and add the fact that cflute is not only my good friend but Colleen's. I got plenty of time with Callie, but most of that time was busy and tightly focussed. All the one-on-one time was spent in my car, and while I can talk and drive, I can't concentrate as much as I like to do when I'm talking with a friend.

Colleen, of course, got even less time -- she'd wanted to at least do a little recreational shopping. Schedules permitting, we'll have to try tacking an extra day onto the next visit.

Colleen ended up feeling excluded, even though she excluded herself because she knows that listening to us rehearse would drive her crazy. And because she knows that if she's around we'll be trying to entertain her -- perform for her -- rather than working on the hard parts in a way that would be excruciating for someone who listens to music purely for pleasure.

Next time we'll have streaming audio, probably using icecast, with a text backchannel probably using either IRC or Jabber. That will mean that remote participants like Colleen and pocketnaomi can be flies on the wall if they want to, and drop out quietly if they're bored.

Having Colleen cater lunch on Saturday was highly successful. Next time we'll have her come in with a snack on Sunday as well, which will hopefully make her feel even more connected and give her a chance to say goodbye to Callie, and sit in on our last session if she wants to.

We had a different set of problems with pocketnaomi, who wanted to be included even though she was stuck up in Seattle. Our initial attempt on Saturday, using a cell phone, was disastrous: Callie interpreted N's saying that the sound quality was barely tolerable as meaning that she didn't want to continue listening. The result was a very upset PocketPerson on the other end of the line, especially since Callie and I turned our cell phones off at that point.

Sunday we set up Skype on my laptop, which was much better, especially after we turned off the video. We used IM (to Callie's laptop) as the backchannel. Naomi told me the next day that

I'm quite happy communicating to you in text while being able to hear you but not be heard. It means if I need to deal with the kids or ask someone a question or rustle the pages of my book, I'm not interfering.

The only glitch came when we took a break, and both of our laptops timed out and dropped the connections. Leaving an upset PocketPerson on the other end of the line again. This time, fortunately, we were able to recover quickly and almost gracefully.

The lessons for next time:

Callie and I both have (non-geekish) people who love us, and who will feel excluded if we don't make an effort to include them. It's a "working weekend", sure, but we can't treat it as just another business trip. It's not some computer conference that's only of interest to us, it's music, and they wish they were with us even while they know they'd be bored silly if they were.
Nokia's speakerphone feature is barely usable for speech; it's intolerable for music. (I noticed this a couple of days ago in the car -- it sort of works, but I was losing about one word in three.) Anyplace with a net connection, streaming audio with text back is the way to go.
The main channels for remote participants need to be high quality and reliable. Streaming audio from a computer that isn't going to go to sleep and drop the connection. Text on the backchannel, projected on a screen or a large monitor where everyone in the group can see it.
We need to keep multiple channels open. Leave phones on -- this isn't a performance, after all. Maybe on vibrate so we can ignore them during songs. Have one or more laptops, with power-saver mode turned off, available for private IMing.
Colleen should cater the break on Sunday, bring the kids if they want to come along, and stay for the last session. She can also take Callie to the airport while the rest of us stay behind to pack things up -- it's on the way to the kids' game night anyway.
The last session on Sunday should be for everyone, and go out on a high note. Do one last run-through of the stuff we feel best about; more like a concert dress rehearsal than a work session.