Real World Technologies’ Engineering Roundtable
The Engineering Roundtable was inspired by an interview with Gary Carleton of Intel. For this interview, members who participate in the Real World Technologies forum generated a list of some twenty odd questions for Gary. Rob Thorpe and I held a conference call with Gary and discussed the questions and related topics. A transcript and brief analysis was released roughly a week after the actual phone interview. At the fall 2003 IDF, Gary indicated that he had enjoyed the interview and thought it was a good opportunity to talk about some of Intel’s work and the technology behind it. From our perspective, such interactions are an excellent way for our members to learn. However, this is not just a one way interaction. Our goal is to use the diverse expertise of our community members to create a flow of ideas in both directions, which ultimately benefits all parties.
A natural evolution of such an interview would be for members to conduct the interview themselves. The Engineering Roundtable is precisely that: an opportunity for our members to interact with and discuss a specific technology related topic in real time with engineers from various companies in the industry through an online chat, mediated by the contributors to Real World Technologies.
How Does It Work?
The Roundtable is a real time chat, hosted by Digi-Net Technologies Inc., using DigiChat, the leading Java based chat server solution. Client side, the DigiChat applet interacts with web browsers, enabling virtually any user to participate without installing new applications. The Roundtable will only be accessible for members of Real World Technologies. Members can reach the Roundtable through the Members menu on the side bar, in the same location as the private messaging function. You will automatically be logged in, using the first whole word of your login. So, if your login is John Smith, you will simply appear as John in the chat.
Since the Roundtables are real time events and the engineers involved have a very limited amount of time, we want to make the best use of their time possible. This involves keeping the discussion on-track and avoiding any major digressions from the relevant topic, which would detract from the experience of both the engineers being interviewed and the audience. Hence, the Roundtable is structured so that only the speakers and the moderators can publicly speak. Audience members will be able to pass questions to the moderators, who will then choose questions to ask the guests based on relevance and appropriateness. A transcript from each Roundtable will be saved, and then edited and released to the public several weeks after the Roundtable itself.
It is strictly prohibited for any member to distribute or produce a transcript of the Roundtable or use information obtained through the Roundtable for commercial or journalistic purposes. Any member doing so will have his or her membership revoked. If you are interested in attending the Roundtable for commercial or journalistic reasons, or have any other questions, please contact us at membership@realworldtech.com.
At this point in time, we have arranged for the first Roundtable, but we have not pinned down the exact date. Keep your eyes out for announcements regarding the Roundtables. All questions and comments are welcome, and should be either asked in the forums or directed to membership@realworldtech.com.
Thank You
We would like to thank the following people for helping us to establish the Engineering Roundtable. First, we would like to thank Todd Johnson, George Richitelli and Doug Cliche of Digi-Net Technologies for introducing us to DigiChat and hosting this event. We would also like to thank Bill Buer, the Product Manager for HP’s Nonstop Systems, for helping to arrange the first Roundtable. Lastly, we would like to thank the contributors and members of Real World Technologies for creating a unique environment in which this could happen.
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