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How
do you connect tribal leaders in Washington State with elected officials
in the other Washington (D.C., that is) using technology? And just
to make it more interesting, let's place the Washington tribal leaders
about as far from D.C. as you can get and not drown...in Ocean Shores.
This was the challenge facing the College of Agriculture and Home
Economics Information Department at the Tribal Technology Conference
held in Ocean Shores, Washington, May 1.
Now you might ask, "How did CAHE get involved with this?" Well, the
original request came in April from the Governor's Office of Indian
Affairs to Scott Fedale (via Bill Gillis, Director of the WSU Center
to Bridge the Digital Divide) and it didn't ask for any "direct" assistance
from CAHE. Initially the request was more for consultation than specific
action.
What the governor's office wanted was to use technology to allow Senator
Daniel Inouye, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs,
to address the leaders of Washington tribal government, gathered in
Ocean Shores at the Quinault Beach Resort for a conference called
"Tribal Technology Visioning."
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| Scott
Fedale, Information Department Chair, joins Senators Inouye,
Murray and Cantwell, live via videoconferencing technology,
in the form of the CAHE WECN system. |
The first conference call about this event made it readily apparent
that the role of the Information Department would quickly change from
consultant to service provider.
The Quinault Lodge was not connected to the state K-20 system. In
addition, the Senate Recording Studio in Washington, D.C., (where
Senator Inouye would be) was connected to the public Internet. Because
of these two facts, the state Department of Information Services had
to tell the Governor's office that they couldn't do anything to help.
But Scott mentioned that the CAHE WECN system has the ability to conduct
a video conference over the Internet and that he'd be willing to try
and help. So, the task to make this all happen fell squarely on the
shoulders of the CAHE Information Department.
A number of phone calls and emails later, Randy Cross, videoconferencing
coordinator for CAHE, was on his way to Ocean Shores to test out the
connectivity at the resort, do a test set-up of one of the WECN units
and a test connection to the D.C. studios. From that point on, details
changed weekly, sometimes daily.
The original plan called for only Senator Inouye in D.C. A few days
later, he wasn't going to be able to appear, but Senator Patty Murray
could. Then Senator Maria Cantwell looked like a possible additional
speaker, but not for sure.
Originally Bill Gillis was going to introduce the technology session
and the senators live from the meeting site. Then Scott was asked
to fill this role. So Scott decided to deliver his remarks via our
WECN system from his office in Pullman.
Originally, the Governor's Office only wanted to connect the senators
with the Quinault Lodge. But then they asked if there was any way
we could also connect some other locations in Washington where tribal
members who couldn't make it to the conference could gather to at
least watch the conversation with the senators.
Scott and Randy conferred and soon they had arranged for WECN viewing
sites in Puyallup, Mt. Vernon, Yakima, Colville and Spokane. The Governor's
Office was extremely pleased, to say the least. So everything was
finally set, right. Well, not exactly!
The day before the conference, Scott received confirmation that only
Senators Murray and Cantwell would be appearing. Murray would talk
at 2:15 for about 10 minutes and be available for questions until
2:35. Then Senator Cantwell would address the conference and answer
questions. |
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There would be a brief break between each Senator's talk giving Scott
the chance to introduce the next speaker while the staff of the Senate
recording studio ushered out one senator and brought in the next senator.
Scott went to Maria Cantwell's Web site and worked up an introduction
for her from the bio on the Web site. Late that afternoon, Scott had
his script nearly finished and was refreshing his memory on how to
operate the WECN unit that Randy had placed in his office to use for
the conference. He was also formulating a plan to help with the timing
of the conference to ensure the "senator swap" would go
as smoothly as possible. But then the plans changed again.
The next morning, one of Scott's first e-mails was from Governor Locke's
office of Indian Affairs. There was another change!
Senator Inouye would also be appearing. But, he would only be available
at 5:15 pm eastern time (2:15 PM Pacific), the same time that Senator
Murray was scheduled to appear. So it was decided to put them together.
When Senator Cant- well's office heard about this, they decided to
adjust her schedule so she could appear at the same time. An emergency
call to the television studio in Washington confirmed the need for
three chairs instead of two and an adjusted time frame for studio
use there. This also eliminated the "senator switch" so
Scott had to rewrite his script and perform the introductions to all
three senators at the beginning of the session.
This also meant that Scott needed to write a new introduction. Once
again Scott cruised the WWW to find a website for Senator Daniel Inouye
and gather information from his online bio to use as a brief introduction
for the senator. (What did we do before the Internet?)
At 2:05 PM Scott was connected with the Quinault site and the other
remote sites. Shortly after this he saw a title slate from the Washington,
D.C., studio site, indicating they were connected as well. With a
cue from the Quinault site, Scott launched into his overview of the
technology and the WSU CAHE WECN system. He then briefly introduced
the three senators and turned over the reins to Senator Patty Murray
in Washington. She "hosted" from the D.C. Studio Senator
Inouye made his remarks first, followed by Senator Murray. When Senator
Cantwell began her remarks, she first said "hello" to two
tribal leaders she recognized who were sitting in the front row of
the auditorium at the Quinault Beach Resort. This got a great reaction
from the audience, who suddenly realized that not only were they seeing
the senators, but that the senators also were seeing them.
Following Senator Cantwell's remarks, Senator Murray turned the program
back to Scott to conduct the question and answer session. Remember
those "planted" questions? Well, they weren't needed. Scott
called for the first question and from then on there was a steady
line of questioners to ask specific questions of the senators until
they had to leave at 2:40 PM
Scott did a brief wrap-up following the Senators' disconnect, then
took some follow-up questions from the audience about the technology,
how it worked and how it might be useful to tribal leadership in conducting
their future business.
By 3 PM Scott had answered all the questions posed to him, and he
signed off. Randy Cross reports that immediately after the break started
the Senators were on the phone to their staffers at Ocean Shores asking
how the session went. And then the senator's aides barraged Randy
with a flurry of questions about various aspects of the technology,
the WECN system, etc.
The bottom line on this event is that the technology worked flawlessly.
The Governor's office was happy, the Senators were happy and the tribal
leaders were happy. All in all, it was a great demonstration of how
videoconferencing technology, in the form of the CAHE WECN system,
can be used to "virtually" bring people together who are over 3000
miles apart. 
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