Meeting Tools

Declaration

Times are changing at HERMES. The secretary and the management cannot provide anymore full service in organizing all meetings etc. like in the past ("Rundum-Sorglospaket"). Moreover, with more and more people being offsite and participating in meetings from outside DESY, certain technical tools have to be used. To learn how to apply these tools is free to everyone. Do not expect the management to act as service persons: we have as much information available as you have.

Quick guide for organizing meetings:

Show self initiative. Read through the webpages and documentation. Get accounts where necessary.
Organize a room and a connection to outside via phone, EVO or Skype.
Pick up the HERMES laptop and set up your meeting.

Only if everbody contributes a little more we can keep HERMES running until its dedicated end.

Rooms at DESY

HERMES offices. For a smaller group of people (not more than 4 or 5) it is often the easiest to meet in one of the management rooms . Please ask. The advantage is that these rooms are equipped with phones that a) have a loudspeaker and b) can directly call people in other countries, without having to call 11 (Vermittlung).

Social Room (white container behind 1e). There is a "spider phone" located permanently, but it does not (yet) work (as of March 2010). You are invited to get it working. Otherwise you may want to try to connect the HERMES phone. It is not possible to plug in ethernet cables in the walls of the social room; but there are several ethernet cables coming OUT of the wall.

Seminar rooms at DESY. Make a room reservation by following the directions on this webpage.

Phone Conferences

Phone numbers in DESY seminar rooms. In most DESY seminar rooms, you will find permanently installed spider (conference) phones. Do not forget to activate the phone conference and send around the phone number. A manual is attached to each spider phone.

DESY Cisco Meetingplace. In DESY offices, you can use the conference service. DESY stopped the 1390 telephone conference service in October 2009. From now on, the CISCO MeetingPlace service should be used with the number 1333.
- Participating in a pre-booked meeting:
  - You can participate from any phone in the world.
    - People from outside DESY phone in by +49 40 8998 1333; wait; ID# .
    - From every phone inside DESY it is enough to dial 1333; wait; ID#.
  - If you use one of the modern management phones, first activate the loudspeaker by pressing the right bottom key, without removing the handset.
    - Dial 1333. Wait for the voice announcement. Follow the directions.
      - If you use the phone of the user who booked the conference, you are automatically connected to the conference (you do not have to type the pin code)
      - From any other phone, you are asked for the pin code.
    - When the meeting is over, hang up by again pressing the right bottom key.
- If you want to organize a meeting, do the following:
  - Get an account. Send an e-mail to telefon.service@desy.de including your phone number and building/room. You will be mailed your account details.
  - Get familiar with the system. http://meetingplace.desy.de/
  - Pre-book every meeting at http://meetingplace.desy.de/:
    - The meeting ID (pin code) should consist of exactly five digits. Do not type the # when booking the meeting. Do not choose a trivial combination (like 12345) because the probability is high that someone else at DESY uses this pin code already. Do not use 44566 (this is the reserved pin code for the planning meeting).
    - Distribute the meeting ID to the participants.
- If you want to connect other people (by calling them so that they don't have to pay for the phone call), do the following: (no experience yet available how to do this with a non-management phone. Please add your experience here.)
  - Dial yourself into the conference by calling 1333; then wait and type the ID.
  - Press "Übergabe" ("handover").
  - Call the other person; always start with a "0". Note that only with a management phone you can directly call numbers outside of Germany.
  - Wait until the person picks up, say hello and ask him/her to stay in the line.
  - Press again "Übergabe". By doing so you add the person to the conference. You are now disconnected.
  - If there are more persons to connect, repeat all previous steps. Once all persons are connected, dial yourself into the conference.
- Remarks.
  - If one schedules a meeting for let's say 16:00 and no person connects within a couple of minutes (exact time unknown), the meeting is automatically cancelled and one has to book a new meeting (use a different ID).

The HERMES phone. If you meet in a room without phone (like MEA or the seminar room in 55a) or with only a phone without loudspeaker (like most HERMES offices), you can use the HERMES phone. It is located in 55a/128 (as of April 2010). You are free to use this phone; make sure nobody else wants to use it at the same time. Please return afterwards.
- Please note: either many people can phone in (if used in conference mode) OR one person can be called. It is not possible to call persons and have others connected by themselves at the same time. The same is by the way true for all the spider phones located permanently in the seminar rooms.
- Manual for the HERMES phone.
  - Unpack.
  - Plug in ethernet cable.
  - Plug in power cable.
  - Wait a couple of minutes until phone is registered.
  - Press handset. You should now hear a dialtone.
  - Press Menu.
  - Press Select 2x.
  - Type 1317. The display should now say "Conference".
  - People can now phone in: +49 40 8998 1317
  - If you mute one of the little microphones, everything will be muted.

EVO Conferences

EVO guide This is an extensive description written by Naomi.
EVO gate
EVO booking at a seminar room at DESY: send an e-mail to Meeting.Service@desy.de

Skype Conferences

In some cases it might be the easiest to use Skype.

Organize Skype calls on your private laptop or the HERMES laptop. A caveat for the latter: there is the danger that you loose all your contacts if Skype is run in an alternating way on different systems. This is a known software bug.
New July 2010: HERMES skype account hermes.at.desy. Password: current HERMES password. Use this account from the HERMES laptop. (Caro July 2010 - I registered with my mail address, contact me in case you need access)
Skype webpage

HERMES Laptop

It is located in 1e/EG.546 (as of July 2010). You are free to use it; make sure nobody else wants to use it at the same time. Return afterwards. As of March 2010, the laptop will automatically boot linux. If you prefer windows (it has a better resolution when slides are projected via beamer), don't run away after firing it up but wait a few seconds and then select windows from the menu.

Posting and Accessing Slides

Speakers should post their slides to the web before their talks.

For non-collaboration meetings, copy your slides to the working plots area:

         /www-hermes/html/PLOTS/

in the subdirectory yymm/ corresponding to the current year and month. This area can be accessed via the URL: http://www-hermes.desy.de/PLOTS/

For exclusive phone conference meetings, copy your slides here:

        /www-hermes/html/groups/dvcsgrp/Meetings/yyyymmdd

For collaboration meetings, copy your slides to the meeting subdirectory in this area:

        /www-hermes/html/groups/mgmtgrp/COLLABMEETINGS/

URL links to the slides are provided in the collaboration meeting agendas on the web.

Opening of HERMES registration page

A new meeting week is approaching and you want to open the registration.

Log in as w3hermes on e.g. geordi.desy.de
cd /www-hermes/html and check which files are there: ls -ltr
- You will find a bunch of files krohnfile_YYYYMMDD.dat and regtable_YYYYMMDD.html . These files keep the historic information of past meetings. Do not modify them, nor their name.
- You should also find regtable.html and krohnfile.dat. These should be the youngest files. Whenever a new person signs up, a new line is added to the end of krohnfile.dat. This file is then used to automatically write the regtable.html file. I.e., there is no use in ever modifying the regtable.html by hand since any change will be overwritten as soon as another person signs up. If a collaborator screwed up his/her registration and asks for changes / deletion, you should change / delete the corresponding line in krohnfile.dat. Restrict editing krohnfile.dat to a short time - close editor immediately after editing is completed!
- To start the actual new registration, proceed as follows.
First copy regtable.html (krohnfile.dat) to regtable_YYYYMMDD.html (krohnfile_YYYYMMDD.dat), using the date the files were touched the last time (find out by ls -ltr). Use cp -p to preserve date.
In the html page of the previous meeting with date = YYYYMMDD, modify the www-link to the registration - otherwise the link will not work anymore on the historic page. The webpages of all meetings are stored in the subdirectory collab.
Delete krohnfile.dat.
Check on the www-page welcome*.html whether the links to the Registration and Participants show up. If it does not, go to the directory of the upcoming meeting and edit the file welcome*.html. Search for the string regtable.html and check that this section is not outcommented in html, and that the name is correct.
Copy the file register.html from the directory of one of the recent meetings to the current meeting directory. Edit the file, adjust dates, potentially day of dinner etc.
- Check that you reach the current registration page by clicking on the link. It should show the dates you just inserted. If it does not, check in welcome*.html and adjust if necessary.
- In case a new institute joins HERMES ;-), you can add one line in this register.html file. This will add another option in the sign-up sheet. Note that the institute string appears twice (in the same line).
Important: now sign up yourself as first person - this will create a first line in krohnfile.dat, and overwrite the regtable.html, which afterwards should contain only your name! Check that everything is correct by clicking on the www-pages.

HERMES Meetings

Useful Links