Zakim - A multimodal software system for large-scale teleconferencing

This paper describes Zakim, a multimodal teleconference system used at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The main requirement that differentiates Zakim from other resarch projects was that the system had to be robust and be universally accessible, as W3C teleconferences run around the clock and are accessed by hundreds of people weekly. The Internet Relay Chat was chosen as the control protocol for the telephone bridge, allowing for easy access to a majority participants. The second part of the paper describes how this system has dramatically improved the way teleconferences are run.