Development of a Discussion Service for the SmartRoom System

The SmartRoom system provides services for assisting such in-room collaboration activity as conferences or meetings. The system is deployed on devices the room is equipped with as well as can access to the Internet. Two key processes are automated: 1) activity agenda (program) control and adaptation and 2) slide show by current speaker. The processes are visualized on big public screens (Agenda and Presentation, respectively). SmartRoom participants can use their personal mobile devices as own access and control points to the services.

In this talk, we develop a Discussion service that allows the participants to provide feedback during the course of current presentation (publishing comments and questions). After the oral part of each presentation the corresponding list of comments is visualized, and the speaker effectively answers continuing the discussion. Our integration of this service into the system is essentially based on the SmartRoom information sharing environment (smart space), which is constructed using the Smart-M3 platform. Our solution employs an external open service to keep track of comments for each presentation. In the SmartRoom space this information is semantically related to presentations, speakers, and participants. Importantly that the information augments the slides the speaker prepared for her/his talk in advance. In summary, the ability to post quick feedback improves the way the participants understand the speaker and increases the overall activity experience.