UMPIRE, as the name itself suggests, is a system aimed at providing a real-world demonstration of the seamless interaction among remote and local participants at regular IETF meetings.

As you may know, the team at Meetecho has been working on ways to improve the ability for remote attendees to actively participate in IETF working sessions. One of the greatest challenges is the integration of remote attendees into the in-room queue or “mic line.” Traditionally, remote participants used to ask their questions into the jabber room and then an in-room volunteer used to go to the mic line and stand for them, relaying their question into the room when they get to the front of the mic line. Unfortunately, this often led to a long lag between the time when the remote participant “asks” the question and the time when their question is injected into the meeting room.

Two queues — a virtual queue and an actual (in-room) queue

Remote attendees will log into the Meetecho platform and will have a virtual mic line that they can enter if they have a question or comment. In-room participants will continue to use normal mic lines. This means that there will be a minimum of two queues — one physical in-room queue and one virtual — and the chair (or delegate) will need to move back and forth between the two, giving people turns. When someone in the virtual queue has a turn, Meetecho will inject their audio the room so that they can speak directly to/with everyone in the actual meeting room.

Meetecho remote participant —> view tutorial on Youtube:
 

That's all folks!