WCALive: The WWW as a program of events

T.E.Allan Palmer, Division of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care, The University of Queensland, Level G - Clinical Sciences Building, Royal Brisbane Hospital, Herston Queensland 4029, Australia, Phone +61 7 3253 1847 Fax: +61 7 3253 7202 Email: T.Palmer@mailbox.uq.edu.au Home Page: Allan Palmer

P.H.V.Cumpston, Division of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care, The University of Queensland, Level G - Clinical Sciences Building, Royal Brisbane Hospital, Herston Queensland 4029, Australia, Phone +61 7 3253 1847 Fax: +61 7 3253 7202 Email: P.Cumpston@mailbox.uq.edu.au Home Page: Phil Cumpston

Professor R.D.M. Jones, Division of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care, The University of Queensland, Level G - Clinical Sciences Building, Royal Brisbane Hospital, Herston Queensland 4029, Australia, Phone +61 7 3253 1847 Fax: +61 7 3253 7202 Email: D.Jones@mailbox.uq.edu.au Home Page: Doug Jones

Keywords: WorldWideWeb, Tertiary Education, Live Event, Internet Broadcast

Background

The 11th World Congress of Anaesthetists was held at the Darling Harbour Convention Centre, Sydney Australia in early April 1996. The Congress was attended by almost 6,000 Anaesthesiologist s from around the globe.

The Division of Anaesthesiology & Intenisve Care of The University of Queensland was given the opportunity to broadcast the proceedings of the plenary session over the internet. Our division has con siderable experience with the World Wide Web due to our involvement with a major international project examining the use of the net in specialist medical distance education - GasBone. We elected to broadcast the congress using Enhanced CuSeeme from White Pine.

Enhanced CuSeeme is the most popular of the internet based videoconferencing systems. Developed initially at Cornell University, CuSeeme was initially a MacIntosh program allowing personal computers to access vid eo and audio traffic being transmitted via the MBone - the multicast backbone of the internet. The software in both Cornell university and White Pine enhanced versions is now available for both the MacIntosh and IBM PC running all variants of Microsoft Windows.

The secret to success for CuSeeme is the use of reflectors. These are computers stationed at strategic points on the internet which rebroadcast video and audio signals to up to 100 new locations. Reflectors may be linked together via a daisychain system. It was our intention to broadcast the congress proceedings from Sydney to Brisbane via a dedicated ISDN link and then distribute the signal worldwide through such a chain of linked reflectors. Last minute technical problems with the broadcast resulted in a public announcement being made barely 5 days before the broadcast was due to commence. Whilst the initial announcement was made via existing mailing lists, up to the minute information was provided via the World Wide Web.

This poster illustrates some features of the web which we believe make it particularly useful as an adjunct to this type of real time event.

Cybercast Web Pages

Key features of the web pages created to support this event included:

distributed site
- broadcast timetable information was held on a server in Queensland
- instructions for software download and broadcast reception were independently updated on a server in the USA
spawned executable application
- URL's with the .cu extension were configured to start up the broadcast reception software directly from the web pages describing the event
'client pull' allowing web pages to dynamically update without the need for CGI scripts
- <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT=60> <TITLE>WCALive: Timetable</TITLE> </HEAD>
- This example causes the browser to reload the document every 60 seconds without the creation of a site or server specific cgi script. The resultant page may then be mirrored automatically.
- The live timetable is an example of this

Conclusion

The broadcast was watched at least in part by over 200 individuals accross the globe. A screen shot is available on line.
Within the period of the congress the web pages were viewed over 1000 times.
As the technical information on the web pages and reflector chain were managed by a team in the USA, the 'crew' at the convention center were free to manage the broadcast itself and update the timetable pages.
The web is a useful medium for the dissemination of complex data with the capability of being updated during the course of real time events.

Acknowledgements

A broadcast of this complexity from a medical congress would not have been possible without the generous help and support of many organisations and individuals including:

Medical Sponsor

Datex Engstrom a division of Instrumentarium Corporation

Technical support and backup

Megavision International PTY Ltd.

Peter Chenoweth, CSD, Melbourne CSD

White Pine

The University of Queensland Prentice Centre

Bay Networks

We also wish to acknowledge the invaluable technical support of Mr George Michaleson

References

The Darling Harbour Convention Centre, Sydney http://www.csu.edu.au/special/conference/venue.html

Division of Anaesthesiology & Intenisve Care http://gasbone.herston.uq.edu.au/home.html

GasBone http://gasbone.herston.uq.edu.au/gasbone.html

Enhanced CuSeeme from White Pine http://goliath.wpine.com/cu-seeme.html

CuSeeme - Cornell University http://cu-seeme.cornell.edu/

MBone - the multicast backbone of the internet http://www.best.com/~prince/techinfo/mbone.html

WCALive support pages - Australiahttp://gasbone.herston.uq.edu.au/~sutpalme/wcalive/home.html

WCALive support pages - USA http://goliath.wpine.com/wca.htm

WCALive: Time table http://gasbone.herston.uq.edu.au/~sutpalme/wcalive/now.html

WCALive: Screen shot http://gasbone.herston.uq.edu.au/~sutpalme/wcalive/pics/cap2.gif

Copyright

Allan Palmer, Phil Cumpston, Doug Jones © 1996. The authors assigns to Southern Cross University and other educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive licence to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The authors also grants a non- exclusive licence to Southern Cross University to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROM, and for the document to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web. Any other usage is prohibited without the express permission of th e author.

Pointers to other Papers
Papers & posters in this theme	All Papers & posters	AusWeb96 Home Page

AusWeb96 The Second Australian WorldWideWeb Conference ausweb96@scu.edu.au