Dear all advocates:
I am not an app developer, I scarcely get around as an advanced user of
software.
For some time I have been looking for a Webinar service so I can offer my
colleagues,
and anyone interested in professional translation, a webinar where I can
deliver my
experience and, maybe, increase my income a bit. However I have crashed with
the
inability of all webinar companies (the Goto, the Jam, Any, and a long
etcetera) to provide
payment options for everyone. They are all centered on Credit Cards or PayPal
(which is
the same as credit cards). Some of them even offer false or misleading
advertising on their
websites saying they accept wire transfer, but when you ask them to provide the
details they
disappear (Goto), or they answer with links to pay with a credit card (Zoom)
and when they
finally answer to the question, they say they only accept bank transfer if you
pay a whole year's
subscription (many hundreds or thousands of dollars), despite they were well
aware I could only
pay by month. I am not rich, and I don't have access to a credit card, and
these companies are
not capable of offering other payment systems (like Skrill, Xoom, and others).
Why they don't?
The easy answer is they are idiots because they might be losing business
opportunities, focusing
only on the "big money", but maybe there is another reason.
Well, I won't rant anymore.
I am here because I thought I might be able to adopt OpenMeetings, maybe the
only alternative
to a market which really is only for an elite. I have worked with open source
software before
(like Joomla - even tweaking its inner organs to create my own
functionalities), but of course,
with much help from the experts or finding common solutions to problems on the
Internet, so I am
very aware and grateful of the fantastic work you do. If I can do this with
OpenMeetings, even if it
takes time, it would be very worthwhile. However, although I am confident, the
problems I have
found installing, configuring and creating a webinar with OpenMeetings, can be
solved eventually,
there is one issue that might not have an easy solution at this moment. I must
say this mail is not
purposed to criticize but to understand OpenMeetings real functionalities at
all levels, at this point
of time.
This issue would be the following:
Me, as OpenMeetings-Webinar manager, host and presenter or “broadcaster”, I
should go into all the
tasks required to have it up and running effectively and efficiently (ideal but
not impossible) to deliver a
given webinar or provide a meeting place. This requires lots of downloading,
installing many different
apps, changing settings in my computer, solving quite a few install and
usability issues, and creating
an appropriate guide with access procedures for my “receivers”, those who will
watch my webinar(s)
to register and enter the meeting as easily as possible.
However, if my “receivers” have to go through that same process, downloading,
installing, etc., most
probably I won’t have any “receiver”, even if my webinar was worth a Grammy.
Most commercial webinar services just require one download and a simple
activation.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but, with OpenMeetings, must those users who
will be “receiving”
my “broadcast” go through the same procedures with imagemagick, FFMpeg,
Ghostscript, SWFtools,
SOX, Environment variables, install and configure OpenMeetings, screensharing
download, and
whatever else I haven’t discovered yet? Or is there a way for “receivers” to
enter a room with a simple
download and a pair of clicks?
Please excuse for such a lengthy post, including the rant, and I hope anyone
can give me a bit of light on
this, the “receivers” side.
Regards,
Richard
