ICT Implements Virtual Meetings

Although ICT Principal Investigator Jeff Roesler is spending the current academic year in Santiago, Chile as a Fulbright Scholar, this distance proved itself no detriment to regular technical review panel (TRP) meetings for an ongoing ICT project.

The TRP for Roesler's ICT project R27-61, Mechanistic-Empirical Design, Implementation & Monitoring for Rigid Pavements, "met" on October 22, 2009, using Adobe ConnectPro to include participants from Champaign-Urbana, Rantoul, Springfield, and Santiago, Chile.

ICT recently implemented this conferencing software, which allows remote participants to share streaming audio and video, files, multimedia presentations and marker boards in real-time. Meetings cab also be recorded for future reference. Although it is not a replacement for valuable face-to-face meetings, this software is available to ICT committees and associates, when appropriate, to cut down on travel time and costs, and for instances like the above when a face-to-face meeting is not possible.