I hope, like me, you've been reading all the discussion both here and on
[email protected] regarding our Skype conf call.
Of all the various points raised, the ones that I'd like to consider is:
1. as the community grows, how do we scale up beyond Skype calls?
2. how do we prevent people who (a) aren't able to or (b) don't want to
take part in Skype calls feeling excluded?
3. how do we ensure that we don't start making decisions on the Skype calls?
One idea I had was to use interactive webcasts instead.... a bit like
the "show-n-tell" that they do in primary school. The objective would
primarily be to allow a contributor to demonstrate some part of Isis
that they've been working on to others in the community (there's a lot
of different viewers/objectstores etc); and in return get some public
approbation.
This might address the above, because:
1. if it runs on a web browser, then any number could subscribe
2. a) the person doing the "show-n-tell" can choose when to run the webcast
b) more people will want to take part, because a web browser
solution is not as invasive as requiring proprietary software such as
Skype to be installed
3. a webcast and the "show-n-tell" metaphor would primarily be a one-way
flow of info ... though I think it should have some sort of
interactivity (at a minimum IM/text support, ideally also voice) so that
it's fun thing to be involved in.
~~~
I did some googling last night to see if there's anything out there that
might support this objective. Of course, there are lots of commercial
webcast/webinar providers, but I was looking for something that's open
source and perhaps more fitting into the ASF.
What I came up with was http://code.google.com/p/openmeetings/, which is
downloadable under EPL license. This software also supports the ability
to record webcasts, apparently. I was wondering if anyone had used it?
If we went with it, my thought would be for one of us to install it and
give it a trial run (they have a demo site but I don't think we'd want
to use that). You never know, if it works really well, perhaps it (or
something like) could be an ASF supported app [but I'm getting a long
way ahead of myself].
Thoughts?
Cheers
Dan
