A uniform meta-model for mediating formal electronic conferences

Formal electronic conferences (FEC) refers to online meetings for a geographically distributed group of people that are regulated by a rigorous set of rules. FEC technologies enable organizations to replace face-to-face business meetings with trustworthy virtual online meetings. In This work we present a Robert's rules of order (RRO)-compatible, motion-driven discussion-thread-centered meta-model, which is capable of uniformly modeling formal electronic conference activities. A tailored computerized mechanism, the collaboration description language (CODL) and its runtime environment, is also developed to formalize the model. The CODL virtual machine adds a layer of encapsulation that decouples FEC applications from underlying platforms: therefore, the development of FEC applications will become more reliable, efficient, and secure. Our preliminary experience with this meta-model is also reported.