Quoting Ken Patterson (dpriso...@dvillage.org): > Lisa > Last weekend the Mythopedic Society meeting used Jitsi Meet (open > source) only 13 participants. It has its ups and downs. Working on > being more like ZOOM, but has only US phone for dial-in. It’s useable. > No webinar functions.
A few comments about Jitsi Meet[1], to elaborate: Although I certainly don't speak for CoNZealand, I constructed the videoconferencing 'chat' function on the Exhibits division's pages using an instance of the Jitsi Meet software that I constructed & administered for the Worlcon on Amazon EC2. I learned a lot (quickly) doing this[2], and hope to help future fannish conventions, in case they have use for such things. 1. Telephone dial-in (an optional extension), to join a 'room' with an audio-only connection, is available via whatever VoIP (voice over IP) service you (as a Jitsi Meet administrator) choose, and so the dial-in numbers _could_ be anywhere in the world, maybe even in diverse parts of the world at the same time. Lisa's impression that dial-in is US-only is probably based on using the Jitsi Project's own free-of-charge public server, meet.jit.si [3], which is somewhere around Austin and offers dial-in access numbers in area code 512, which is in that part of Texas. (Presumably, Mythopedic Society used that particular public server, rather than electing to run its own.) 2. Webinar ('live streaming') functionality is available, via an optional extension, sending out video streams to YouTube or any of various other streaming platforms. This helps skirt one of Jitsi Meet's design limits, where each room cannot admit more than 75 simultaneous video participants (and performance starts to flag about about 30). Live streaming permits scaling to vast numbers of remote viewers -- and is more realistic than dozens of mutually interacting video participants, anyway. 3. Likewise, you can have collaborative editing, via an extension to use Etherpad. 4. It can optionally integrate with Slack, Google Calendar, and Office 365. > The Physicians of Vilnoc by Lois McMaster Bujold. Not the best of > series (placeholder?) Recommend if you’re reading the series. > Available from the usual sources. LMB's Penric & Desdemona series of novellas (this being #8, comprising a subseries set in the World of the Five God universe) might be deemed reliable comfort reading, in this anxious time, in the sense that you can expect Penric and his co-resident demon Desdemona to walk into some sort of dreadful trouble, but that things will then work out basically OK by the end, through intelligent problem-solving and team-work. In this case, the dreadful trouble is an epidemic disease. Go figure! [1] The Jitsi Project coders, working with a sponsoring enterprise called '8x8', produce a number of codebases, each called Jitsi [something]. Jitsi Meet is best-known, but strictly speaking, calling it 'jitsi' is non-specific, like, if I say 'Hey, quadruped, it's breakfast time' and a raccoon then strolls in, instead of our cat. I.e., outcome meets spec, yet isn't entirely as intended. [2] I am taking some time to write up lessons learned with tips for conventions considering the software, for future virtual or hybrid events. Available 'Real Soon Now' (RSN). [3] Earlier this year, I finally got a chance to 'meet' my biological mother on Jitsi Meet, a delightful example of technology enabling a human connection. (I protect her privacy, so am eliding details.) We'd intended to get together when she came back to the Bay Area this past May, but then of course the world blew up -- but I was able to just say 'Please humour me and open meet,jit.si/[her name] in your copy of Chrome', and it immediately Just Worked[tm]. So, score one for the Austin Java guys. And, if I may say, as child of a closed adoption, this business of resembling one's relatives is a bit freaky, but has good points. http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/bio-mom.jpeg _______________________________________________ Basfa mailing list Basfa@lists.basfa.org http://lists.basfa.org/listinfo.cgi/basfa-basfa.org