Communication digital tools

Workshop 2 : Thursday 4th of May 2017

45 CRI members (staff, teachers and students) participated to the second workshop.

Three main subjects were discussed :

• Events organization
• Video usage at CRI
• Instant communication

The main decisions taken by the community were :

• Events : put ALL events (clubs, science, conferences, workshops, whatever) on https://events.cri-paris.org
• Instant communication : migrate from Slack to an open source tool, share by everybody.
• Generalize video usage with YouTube and frugal filming culture

Video usage at CRI

Our main challenge :

Our videos are split on many platforms : YouTube, Vimeo, web sites, FUN, etc. In addition, most events, lectures and workshop are not filmed. A lot of information is lost. We do not use the power of the video medium to communicate.

What we need to do :

• Improve videos availability :
  • Drop all videos on CRI's YouTube, better organized, with keywords, playlists and channels (public and private).
  • Website: a portal to show the videos through the website, independently of where the videos are hosted
  • Use channels to promote CRI videos on giant screens, CRI Web site and CRI social media accounts.
• Generalize frugal filming to set up a movie culture within the CRI staff/students for next year.
  • Train all willing CRI students and staff to frugal filming and editing,
  • Access within CRI to recording equipment (frugal or not) with clear guidelines of use. Everyone can borrow equipment from MOOCLab (12 cameras available) or with personal smartphones plus cheap external microphones (available at MOOCLab and IT).
  • Encourage staff and students to film all interesting events (lectures, workshops, project presentations) and to document projects by filming critical steps.
  • Document CRI ecosystem with videos : teacher and students interviews, project presentations, testimonials...

Instant messaging and video chat

Notre plus grand défis :

Le CRI a actuellement un trop grand nombre de messagerie instantanée, mais également de communication vidéo. Chaque département a fait le choix de son propre système, et très peu d'entre eux communiquent avec les autres. Certaines personnes ont également peur d'essayer de nouveau outils, trop complexe au premier abord.

Ce que nous devons faire :

• Créer un système de messagerie instantanée commune :
  • Accéder à des formations pour les outils de messagerie instantanées
  • Un système de communication de travail (comme Slack) unifié à travers le CRI, avec également un système de compte commun
  • Pouvoir partagé les fichiers sur le chat
  • Pouvoir configurer puissamment les notifications
• Créer un système de messagerie instantanée commune :
  • Pouvoir lancer un chat vidéo à plusieurs depuis le système de messagerie instantanée (room)
  • Option partage d'écran disponible
  • Pouvoir streamer la conversation pour partager les réunion avec le Monde

In addition to these email clients, we also use MailChimp for email marketing campaigns.

Recommandation :

CRI members should use their CRI email whenever possible ; forwarding their emails to another tool (even personal Gmail) will cause problems when answering to calendar invites. To benefit of the best integration, use GMail with your @cri-paris.org address. IT Team can help you to migrate your personal account data.

What we need :

• Fast and simple system for communication
• Multi plateforme
• Easy to launch video chat

Next CRIBOOT workshop can tackle the challenge of deciding on a united communication application.

What we need :

• A single system that is used by everybody at CRI
• integration with Google CRI ID

Recommandation :

Hangouts seems the best candidate. Our Pro version can accommodate 20 concurrent users and is fully integrated with Google Calendars and Google Groups. Video conferences can be shared through a simple URL with people external to CRI on any device, without a Google account.

Only caveat : Hangouts is blocked by the Great Firewall of China ; you need a VPN to access it from China, like all Google products.

Recommandation :

As long as the presentations are exported in a universal format, keeping duplicate tools is not a major problem. If a presentation is created collectively, Google Slides should be your first choice since it is also completely integrated with Drive, YouTube and Google Photo.

What we need :

• A policy to decide when to use each solution.
• A graphical and editorial charter by communication.

Recommandation :

WordPress Blogs hosted on http://www.wordpress.com should be re-internalized on a WordPress instance hosted on a CRI Cloud server.

What we need :

• Functionality to gather all the art and people under a CRI entity
• Maybe possibility to share ressources under a package (for proposing open source assets)

Communication team should drive the discussion to chose a common platform.

Recommandation :

CRI should only use YouTube and migrate existing videos to it. Vimeo is not integrated with our other tools, has no automatic translation feature and its long-term continuity is not assured. Unfortunately, the current YouTube channels used at CRI are personal ones, which have technical limitations and are not legally linked to the CRI. IT Team will try to migrate these channels (mainly CRI, Savanturiers and Gamelab) to our CRI professional account.

To avoid this in the future, please do not create additional channels without involving IT or Communication teams.