[Discuss] Fwd: Zoom Meeting Alternatives

[bill.n1vux at gmail.com (Bill Ricker)]

reply-all fail ...

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Bill Ricker <bill.n1vux at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 3:17 PM
Subject: Re: [Discuss] Zoom Meeting Alternatives
To: Jack Coats <jack at coats.org>




On Thu, Aug 20, 2020 at 9:47 AM Jack Coats <jack at coats.org> wrote:

> I wonder if Zoom or another provider has a version that has
> 'attendees' and 'audience' mode.
>

Yes. The "Webinar" product category has the firm split, so scales better,
has more control.
Most Webinar products have one Presenter and one moderator as the only
talkers, and many have only screen share, no head-shot video.
Most webinar products allow voice submission of questions, from both
web/app and from phone dial-ins, often with an employee of the product as
facilitator of questions-queue (so hardly practical for free!)

Zoom Webinar is an actual product separate from classic Brady Bunch meeting
Zoom Meetings which is what most people know as Zoom.
However it does not seem to be in their Free as in Beer options.
Unlike classic webinar products  it allows multiple video talkers ... it
supposedly scales absurdly "100 video participants and 10,000 viewers".

(100 folks with their cameras on simultaneously shouldn't be something
desirable unless you're holding a New England Elective Town Meeting on-line
!)

BLU is sort of faking this by having JITSI streaming to YouTube, but it's
very obviously multiple pieces since we need to monitor 3 chats ... and we
get more folks in the JITSI than the YT so far, which is fine, as long as
we don't hit the soft limit on the JITSI (30 video participants is where it
falls over supposedly, an absurd number to hit since you can't see more
than 12 at once anyway). With keyboard shortcuts to toggle mic and camera,
no need to leave camera on all meeting for
mostly-viewing-sometimes-commenting folks!

StreamYard is designed for producing Panel discussions as commercial media,
so allows multiple talkers under moderator/host control - and firm division
of streaming audience who get video/audio and reply by text only.
Innovation is syndicating to multiple social-media streamers, leveraging
their CDN/edge, and merging the 3 reply text streams into a host/panelist
console and providing tool to promote chat text into the "Lower Third" of
the screen (There is a free-as-in-beer-level as well as 30-day trial and
pro mode.)

The Attendees would work similar to Zoom today, but the Audience could
> be non-participating listener mode (or could possibly move to
> 'attendee mode' with a few clicks and approval of organizers.
>

Zoom Webinar does allow promotion of viewers to panelist.
(I have other reasons for not wanting to give them business but that's a
good feature.)


-- 
Bill Ricker
bill.n1vux at gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux


-- 
Bill Ricker
bill.n1vux at gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux