For the second year in a row, attendees at INCOLSA's annual Board Meeting were treated first-hand to a demonstration of just how unpredictable networking technology can be. As in past years, INCOLSA gave Board members an option to attend the April 26, 2006 Board Meeting from any of four remote locations via video-conferencing technology. The technology offers remote attendees significant savings in travel time and costs, but of course only when it works.

As in the past, this year's Board Meeting was held at the Marten House Lilly Conference Center in Indianapolis, with four remote, satellite locations throughout the State. The plan was to provide two-way, real-time, Internet-based voice and video between each of the remote sites and Indianapolis. Unfortunately, once again, the Marten House's Internet connection was too unreliable to support working connections to the remote sites. As a result, INCOLSA had to resort to backup cell phone communication to get voting results from the remote sites, remote attendees were unable to see or hear speakers in Indianapolis, and Indianapolis attendees had to endure long delays as staff tried to work around the communications issues.

The Marten House's Internet connectivity depends on an AT&T DSL connection, and in fact, that connection was tested successfully by INCOLSA staff several times during the week preceding the Board Meeting. Unfortunately, AT&T technicians scheduled a software upgrade on their network during the early morning hours before the INCOLSA Board Meeting. Unexpected problems with the upgrade knocked out AT&T's Internet service to about 100,000 DSL customers throughout a five-state region, including central Indiana and Indianapolis. Internet access for these customers was down for about 12 hours on Wednesday, until well after the INCOLSA Board Meeting had concluded. A newspaper article describing the problems is attached ('pdf' format).

INCOLSA staff are carefully reviewing exactly what happened, and looking at alternatives for next year's Board Meeting. The Marten House's Internet connectivity problems, along with similar problems at last year's 2005 Board Meeting, are suggesting to some that a virtual INCOLSA Board Meeting across the Internet is just not practial, unless INCOLSA moves its meeting to a new venue, with a dedicated, reliable T1-level connection to the Internet.