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By Emmett Crawley

You can view recorded streams of the conference at http://commonsvcg.oar.net/megav

By all accounts, Megaconference V, hosted by OSU on December 10, was a huge success as judged by reactions from the conference's world-wide participants. Organized by Robert Dixon, chief research engineer for the Office of the CIO and OARNet, Megaconference is the world's largest Internet video conference. See www.megaconference.org for details.

This year, more than 200 institutions from around the world participated, representing every continent, with probably 1,000 people participating. Advances in Internet2 H.323 multipoint videoconferencing technology meant the conference's interactive communications were virtually glitch-free. Dixon says, as the result of an earthquake in parts of Southeast Asia on Dec. 10, the only areas not able to participate fully were audiences in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Megaconference V featured presenters who covered topics under the theme, "Sustaining Global Communities through Videoconferencing." Interspersed among the technical presentations were mini musical concerts, roll call of participants, and five-year Megaconference attendance recognition awards—OSU and OARNet were among the 16 award recipients and received beautiful, engraved crystal plaques. Among the mini musical concerts (a first for the Megaconference), viewers were treated to the rarely-heard didgeridoo, a long, horn-like instrument that is played by Australian Aborigines.

In addition to the concerts, this conference marked a number of other firsts, including the first- time participation by the United Nations and the first-time participation by a university president--OSU president, Karen Holbrook.

Dixon, in addition to being organizer, is also founder of the Megaconference. Over the years, Dixon says he has thought, due to the huge effort and many details involved in organizing Megaconference, "I will never do this again. But, each conference gets better and better; institutions' offers of help increase with each conference." Dixon noted that videoconferencing technology continues to advance and that some equipment producers, Polycom, Inc. for example, attend the Megaconference to help operate their equipment free of charge.

Planning is already underway for the 2004 Megaconference. Also, a Megaconference Junior is being planned for spring 2004; this event will be modeled after the Megaconference, but tailored for the k-12 audience.