live simulcasts of meetings

[blu at vl.com (Tom Metro)]

John Abreau wrote:
> Tom Metro <blu at vl.com> wrote:
>> While we haven't yet accomplished live simulcasts of meetings...
> 
> I'm not sure how this could work, since IRC is text-based; IRC participants
> would be unable to see or hear the meeting.

As I noted, I acknowledged that we don't have live simulcasts. The 
intent was just for meeting attendees to communicate during the meeting.

As it turned out it appeared that only myself and Rajiv were both 
present and logged in to IRC (and Rajiv was silent, so he might have 
been logged in from another computer). A few people not at the meeting 
spoke up briefly. I relayed to them that the meeting topic had changed 
from what was planned (instead concentrating on Xen) and that the 
originally planned topic (global file system, iSCSI) would be rescheduled.


>> > The open source Gizmo Project provides free conference calling:
> 
> This could work. ...I just set up a gizmo account and got a
> conference  call number that's apparently supposed to be permanent:
> 
>    598-9685

Excellent.

Are there any controls for setting who has access to talk and who is 
listen only? Ideally, we'd want to mute the audience most of the time to 
cut background noise.


> ...it would make sense to have one laptop at the meeting with an
> decent microphone to provide a listen-only audio feed to the
> conference call...

It seems there are a number of ways to pull this off. As I mentioned in 
the prior message, I think the low-tech solution, which won't depend on 
the bandwidth of MIT's WiFI network, is to simply call in to the 
conference room via a cell phone, and have the speaker use a bluetooth 
headset.

A bluetooth headset talking to a laptop would be my second choice. And 
an "open air" mic on a laptop would be my third choice.


> ...and maybe connect (or un-mute) a speaker on that laptop for
> Q&A before and after the presentation.

This is where I was thinking IRC would come into play. Easier to manage 
than inbound audio.


> I'm not sure if videoconferencng would be feasible, but perhaps we could
> do a webcam video stream in parallel with the voice conference.

I'd start with just audio. It may only be an 80% solution, but it 
captures the most important aspect of the meeting.

What I'd like to see as the next step instead of streaming video is some 
sort of periodic screen capture of what's on the projector. If we could 
figure out how to do that, it'd have more value to remote participants 
than a tiny, grainy video image.

One low-tech approach to this problem is to have speakers provide their 
slides in advance, and publish them via blu.org. Then someone attending 
the meeting could indicate the slide number via IRC.


> Does anyone want to voluneer their laptop for the in-meeting conference
> call connection at the April BLU meeting?

If it is a meeting I attend, I could, providing we don't get someone who 
has free minutes to volunteer their cell phone.

  -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/

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