Mediating Electronic Meetings

Electronic meeting control has been the focus of many research efforts; however, extensively adopted standards are still unavailable. In this paper, we present a generic model for electronic meeting control. Our model is based on the formal meeting protocol commonly known as the parliamentary procedure or Robert's Rules of Order (RRO). Capturing the essential features of traditional RRO, we suggest extension mechanisms in order to exploit the capabilities of electronic media. Centered on the concept of a discussion thread, our extended RRO model can handle concurrent meeting activities, multiple floors, amendment nesting, and discussion hierarchies. M-Net, an electronic meeting system, is introduced as an example supported by our model.