The grand opening of the Liberal Arts & Science (LAS) building was Monday evening. His Highness the Emir, Her Highness Sheikha Mozah, and his insignificance Al Gore, along with an elite group of local dignitaries, were on hand for the big event.
They had a top-notch light show, and short speeches by several key individuals, two of whom we were responsible for piping in over the internet. Dr. Gates, president of Texas A&M, and Dr. Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon, were each supposed to give their speeches live from their respective institutions, across a Polycom videoconference link. CMU dialed into TAMU, who dialed into Doha, and TAMU handled the switching between their signal and CMU's. All we had to do was get it onto the screen & speakers, and get a signal sent back to them. No problem. Right?
I was sitting with Jeune, who was running the video end of things for the AV crew, who were out of Dubai. Our command center was in the LAS parking garage, where everything (including the video equipment) had a nice coating of dust thanks to the two-day sandstorm blowing outside. We had the link up early, working great, and were ready to do some final testing, but they didn't give us a chance. I was "on coms" with Jeune and the audio guys, who were up on a platform behind the audience, and Mark was on an IP phone connection with the folks at TAMU, who were in the KAMU studio.
Bear in mind that we had spent a significant amount of time preparing for this. For the past week, we had sent countless emails back and forth with a long list of individuals, comparing notes, discussing contingency plans, hashing over every minute technical detail of the feed. We had tested the dual-feed arrangement with CMU and TAMU on Thursday. We had spent many hours on Friday getting a network connection down to the video command center, hooking up the Polycom unit, and conducting a limited test with College Station (the audio guys weren't ready yet). We had spent many hours on Sunday hooking the Polycom unit into Jeune's equipment, and testing it extensively with College Station, late into the night. We were well-prepared.
After speeches from a couple of local dignitaries, Dr. Gates was up, and his speech went smoothly. We had about 30 seconds to switch from TAMU to CMU while the emcee was introducing Dr. Cohon, and it was at that very moment that CMU's Polycom unit dropped the connection. We're not sure why, but we suspect that someone at CMU pulled a boner.
They were able to reconnect quickly, but when we went live with Dr. Cohon, we had video but no audio. After a few eternal minutes during which Mark and I stared, TAMU scrambled, the AV crew fumed, and the Emir chuckled, the dean of CMU-Qatar stepped up to the podium and delivered an impromptu "stand-in" speech. It was embarrassing for us, because it looked like we had dropped the ball, and frustrating, because we were helpless to do anything about it. I guess that's the way it goes when you work with remote live feeds.
You'd have thought, with the inventor of the internet on hand, things would have worked properly. Then again, he's so far left, it's probably asking too much for things to go right. So, blame it on Al Gore. He's still managing to make everyone around him look bad.
It sure would have been nice if it had all worked. Sigh.