We are planning on supporting remote presentations again at the Open Media Camp. We did this at last year's Drupal Camp Colorado and were able to get all but one remote presenter connected during the camp. The one problem came because that person didn't test the VNC, iChat, or Skype connection ahead of time. Testing is key to this since every location has different firewall and packet shaping configurations.
I've been doing these type of remote connections in classrooms for 5 years and while there are dozens of configurations that will work, I REALLY recommend a separate connections for video and screen and using VNC on a computer hosted where the audience is so the screen refresh lag is on the presenters end. Since they normally know the interfaces and material, this is less distracting for them. The video conferencing clients are all configured to drop the quality of video before audio, so if things start going bad with the connection the presenters video will get choppy, but presentation and audio will normally be good enough to get by until the connection improves.
One exciting software release since we did Drupal Camp Colorado is the 2.8 beta of Skype for OSX. This allows users to switch between sending video and their screen. The codecs used seem to also have improved and work really well with high bandwidth connections. The downside is the screen isn't actually shared... meaning the remote user is sending their screen, but the audience can't share control. I still prefer VNC because of dual control and the fact that a drop in bandwidth has no impact on what the audience sees with the VNC configuration.
A number of people asked about remote presentations after Drupal Camp Colorado and this I prepared the following list of remote presentation "basics". Now this has come up again, I'm posting this so everyone can benefit from the conversation.
Why iChat?
I really like iChat because the UI is incredibly easy, so many people already have AIM accounts, and the H.264 codec scales up really when the additional bandwidth is available. Skype's latest clients work really well, but still lack the multi-user feature. Mebeam's server solution looked really promising, but last time I checked they've shut it down because it was too popular and nothing has replaced it. ooVoo offers mutli-user between both Man and Windows users, but is currently too bandwidth needy to work in most locations.
Focus on One to Many
For one to many set-ups, a combination of iChat or Skype and VNC works really well. The more remote presenters you add, the more latency starts to impact the way the presenters interact. I try to only do multiple remote users with people who are familiar with the video conferencing experience.
Avoid Portable, Battery Powered Hardware
The main reason I volunteered to coordinate this is it is taking place at Denver Open Media's studios. We have fixed lighting, cameras, projectors, mics, audio mixers, video switchers, and cabling. While I have set this up at when the audience is at a conference and all to the gear needs to be portable, this is MUCH harder to pull off. No matter how much gear I bring, I always find I'm missing an adapter needed to tap into the locations setup or having someone roll a chair over a lav mic cable and trying to splice this back together 10 minutes before the session.
Know Your Network
My worst experience facilitating a remote presenter was at the New Media Consortium conference in Hawaii. I was co-presenting a session on using iChat in the classroom with Kurt Knight from Apple's iChat group. We set everything up ahead of time and we were talking to Kurt before the session started, but as the conference attendees got to into their rooms and started using their laptops, the amount of bandwidth available dropped and the quality of the connect suffered. Knowing how the network is configured is important. At SXSW, the presenters are hardwired into a separate network with a separate internet connection than the wireless access points open to attendees. This is definitely something to consider at DrupalCon or Drupal Camp LA.
Know Your Ports
Knowing the ports using by different applications is VERY important, but even that is not enough. Packet shapers can also be a problem, especially at universities. As the bandwidth utilization gets high, packet shapers will often start giving priority to basic http traffic and allocating less bandwidth to traffic using other ports. This makes testing incredibly difficult because everything could work fine one day and be horrible the next. When you ask, you'll be told that "nothing has changed". This is also why I love using Internet2 connections. Because of the size/speed of those connection, they are often connected directly to the locations backbone by passing the firewall and/or packet shaper they have on their commodity internet connections.
Know Your Codecs
The quality of the interaction is going to depend largely on the codec and bandwidth. While iChat and MSN users can connect with video, the quality of the video isn't even 50% of what you get when 2 iChat clients connect with H.264. H.264 also works really well with Macs because they primarily use hardware for the H.264 compression and decompression. Without hardware compression, the CPU takes a big hit. Skype has a deal with Logitech to provide "high quality video", but this still requires a Core Duo 2 and a 384 kbps connection.
Don't Forget the Basics
No mater how much $$ you spend on hardware and bandwidth if your presenter is standing in front of a bright window or in a loud room, the quality of the presentation suffers. Constant camera jitters, panning, and zooming at either end is REALLY distracting as well as requiring more information is compressed/sent. A well lit face can convey a lot more detail to the audience. The less the presenter moves in front of a solid background, the better the image quality will be due to the nature of compression.
The applying the basics of audio and video recording can really improve the quality of a remote presentation.