A New Challenge for Pitt’s PILS

Phone taps ordinarily are thought of as an espionage tool, a means of collecting incriminating evidence. One would think there would be no use for such a device in academia. But Pitt’s Portable International Lecture System (PILS) recently used a phone tap to deliver live responses from former North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) spokesperson Jamie Shea to listeners’ comments and questions about current geopolitical trends, the United States’ changing transatlantic relationships, and how NATO is responding to them all.

Using a video camera, laptop computer, and server, PILS provides “a flexible, lightweight way to broadcast a variety of guest lectures live over the Internet,” explained Mark J. Weixel, director for informatics in the University Center for International Studies (UCIS). PILS was created by UCIS and made possible by a 2003 grant from the High Performing Network Applications Initiative, a project of Pitt’s Office of the Provost.

“Streaming video and audio is quite prevalent in academia worldwide. I think that UCIS’ use of it is unique in that we are actively promoting its use to extend participation in our wide range of activities to people who can’t attend due to time or location restrictions,” Weixel said. “Furthermore, we maintain the system on our own. This quasi-guerilla TV studio makes it possible for us to set up a live feed for an event fairly easily and without excessive preparation. I don’t know of any other international studies center in the United States that is using streaming media in this way.”

In December 2004, Stephen Lund, assistant director of the Center for West European Studies and European Union Center within UCIS, was contacted by Carmen K. Iezzi of the Atlantic Council of the United States (ACUS), a nonpartisan, educational, tax-exempt organization that promotes U.S. leadership and engagement in international affairs based on the central role of the Atlantic community in meeting international challenges. Iezzi, program coordinator of ACUS’ Office of Education and the Successor Generations, was looking for suggestions for an online student conference she was organizing on security-related issues and NATO.

Iezzi also sought Pitt’s assistance in facilitating the Web cast of the conference’s April 19 keynote interview with Shea, who is NATO’s deputy assistant secretary general for external relations.

Lund turned to Weixel.

The challenge of the ACUS Web cast was to create an Internet broadcast of a telephone conversation. Admittedly, ACUS’ request caused “a moment of head scratching” for Weixel because, he said, “PILS’ orientation has always revolved around video, for which there are very straightforward data interfaces to simplify taking the moving images and piping them into the computer to broadcast them.”

A day or more of searching resulted in the acquisition of a phone tap that allows Weixel to redirect the audio from his telephone to the microphone jack on his laptop. “In this way,” Weixel said, “I was able to conference into the phone call between Carmen Iezzi and Dr. Shea, with Ms. Iezzi acting as a moderator, and then pipe the audio into the computer, which streamed the material out to the server where users from around the world connected.”

PILS also created an interactive Web forum so listeners from Australia, China, Ireland, Liberia, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Sweden, and the United States could post questions to Iezzi in real time. Iezzi could then pose those questions to Shea.

Lund said Weixel “did a great job, and I feel sure we’ll be using this technology again to connect people around the world so they can share ideas and opinions.”

The keynote interview with Shea has been archived, along with other PILS broadcasts, for on-demand access. To listen or view PILS on-demand content, visit www.ucis.pitt.edu/pils/ondemand.html.