Free Software video conferencing ( and PLUG mtgs )

[der.hans]

moin moin,

I've worked remotely for more than the last few weeks. As such, I've used
a bunch of video conferencing tools.

Recently, Libre Planet went to virtual only over the course of a week and
ramped up its jitsi infrastructure to match. I joined both as a viewer and
presenter. From my perspective, it worked pretty well. It also took
significant effort from a good tech team to pull it off.

I'm using https://meet.jit.si/ for some of my new requirements, e.g.
kidling music lessons and meeting with teachers. It's available for people
to use at no cost. Obviously, that's not a sustainable business model. I'm
grateful to them thus far and am looking for options to support them.

Red Hat uses bluejeans for video conferencing and reportedly has pretty
good results with it.

NextCloud ( and other projects ) uses the WebRTC standard to do video
chat. My eperiments with it have thus far not worked out.

There's also jami, which is peer to peer, so I'm worried about scalability
issues.

See the following post with links about video conferencing scalability isssues:

https://emacsen.net/@emacsen/103894586993913338

Given those articles, it looks like we would need a cloud service with
either an SMU or MCU based system in order to host interactive online PLUG
meetings. Our presentations don't really require it, we could live stream
video and then chat via our IRC channel.

Interactive that live-streams is probably the best option for
presentations. Allow some people to join meeting style, but most people
would be watch only. For online conferences ( and many work meetings ),
I'd prefer to be on a watch-only stream and only join during periods
where I have input.

For Stammtisch, that's not really the experience I'm seeking. Even with
jitsi and bluejean, you end up with one large conversation rather than
dyanamic, organic clusters of conversations.

Someone told me that Zoom has breakout rooms where private side
conversations can take place. Still not the same as a hallway track type
of experience, but allows more than a few people to participate.

BTW, emacsen is one of the hosts of Libre Lounge, an excellent podcast
about Free Software and culture. He does most of the tech for the
show. The other host is Christopher Lemmer Webber. I have mentioned them
in a couple of my presentations as Chris was one of the authors of the
ActivityPub standard used by the Fediverse.

https://librelounge.org/

ciao,

der.hans
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