Hi,
Web conferencing is becoming more an integral part of how we collaborate yet we seem to have problem upon problem and every time try out different services. Webchick said happy to hear about alternatives that are as inclusive as a phone, I believe the open source ones will connect using asterisk.
We've had issues on call quality, costs, scaling, so thinking a little longer term would it be good to investigate investing in our own infrastructure for this? Or perhaps work with other projects who may have similar issues?
Here's a few links:
http://incubator.apache.org/openmeetings/
http://demo.bigbluebutton.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_conferencing_software
I've played with the demos before and played around with red5 a bit but don't have an idea of what infrastructure would be needed to get started.
Comments
Criteria
Here are the criteria of any medium we use for official DA meetings:
1) Must have the ability for international participation. We have board members in countries ranging from Australia to UK, and community members in every corner of the globe.
2) Must have the ability to record meetings for playback for benefit of people who couldn't be there.
3) Must not exclude people on the basis of their technology stack. There are a lot of great videoconferencing software out there that work wonderfully on Mac and Windows and fail horribly on Linux, for example.
4) Must be able to support at least 50 people simultaneously. The board alone is 15 people (when we're full) + the executive director + staff giving updates + (in this case) 13 nominees + interested community members. (This requirement unfortunately instantly leaves out most free conferencing software people would normally think of like Skype and G+ hangouts.)
5) Must not be cost-prohibitive; the Drupal Association is a non-profit, and wants to spend as much of its money as possible on helping Drupal be awesome, and not on DA-supporting infrastructure such as conferencing software. (This unfortunately leaves out options like WebEx and AdobeConnect, which otherwise meet all of these criteria.)
6) Open source solutions are a huge plus. But anything deployed on Drupal.org hardware must be pre-approved by the infrastructure team (since it's more burden on them to support + get paged about), and may incur further costs to our hosting infrastructure. See point #5.
To-date, only conference calls w/ international dial-in numbers + IRC fall-back have fulfilled these requirements. If anyone's aware of new technologies that do, we'd love to hear about them. In particular, the lack of face-to-face communication is challenging in meetings.
Yugma, dimdim & Zoho
www.yugma.com
Paid when you start to add users, but not prohibitive pricing
http://www.dimdim.com/
But having just checked they have been aquired by Salesforce
www.zoho.com/meeting/
Ok pricing here too.
Will do some more research.
Nigel
Might want to explore Big Blue Button
I've yet to try it, but it seems like BigBlueButton may meet all the criteria that webchick describes above.
Having access to an integrated open source solution would be beneficial for not only association meetings but local user group meetings, camps, conferences, and other community education projects.
http://drupal.org/project/bbb
http://www.bigbluebutton.org/open-source-integrations/
https://github.com/bigbluebutton/
Gus Austin
BigBlueButton and FOSS
Last I saw, BigBlueButton required Flash on the client and specifically Adobe's version, so it's debatable whether or not it meets webchick's criteria. Does choice of technology stack extend to being able to audit the code on your computer?
Also, Adobe's Flash on most Linux platforms lags behind and is generally not very good, but I suspect it works well enough for BBB else they'd be taking a lot more flames.
I wonder a bit about mumble or jitsi, but I've not tested them in anything like this situation yet.
Google+ Hangouts On Air
As suggested by me via twitter, but also see post by Thomas Svenson: http://groups.drupal.org/node/254898#comment-819838
Including automatically recording for sharing, on for example YouTube
There are some limits, to clarify what you can/can't do.
Only 10 people can "participate". Once you start broadcasting anyone can participate as a viewer.
webchick also raised potential privacy policy issue with Google, not sure why.
Here is the Hangouts on Air FAQ which might help?? http://bit.ly/JcBBSD
Nigel
Googopoly
I am not registered with the Googopoly because of its privacy policy requiring travel to California and claiming rights over some of my work forever. See http://tos-dr.info for a summary.
Could people like me still participate? View?
G+ HOA as complement
Yeah, I believe Hangouts can be a great way of making it much easier for a lot more people to take part. Posting a link on Twitter to a hangout only requires a couple of clicks to start viewing. Compare that to the traditional web conference systems where I have to login/sign-up and so on.
While Hangouts doesn't have all the bells and whistles, it has more than enough for most our needs. The screensharing is really impressive as it not only allow you to share the whole screen (or multiple screens if you have that), but also a single window. That is most useful as if I share a window, it will never be covered by other windows for the viewers if I need to quickly look at something in another window.
Yes, there is a limit of 10 people that can be video/audio active, but an unlimited number can view. I believe it is possible to configure so views can use the built in comment feature for the hangout though, thus be able to for example ask questions.
Last big thing for me is that On Air Hangouts are automatically recorded to YouTube and thus easily made available for anyone to watch later.
Oh, and with the G+ Event feature it is of course possible to schedule them too.
However, I don't see Hangouts being possible to use for everything we need, especially considering the 10 active people cap. So for that reason we will need another solution too.
From what I have seen of the Big Blue Button I think that would make a great choice. Particularly as it is also aiming to be very good for educational/training use.
Thus, my opinion here is that combining Hangouts with a solution such as BBB could be the optimal for us.
--
/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com
Make sure to read the list of criteria...
Google Hangouts is a non-starter because of the 10 person cap. The absolute minimum requirement for a meeting is:
== 15 people. And it actually could be up to 17 people until Feb 2013 since Donna and Steve are staying on a full year of their terms, assuming Donna and/or Steve is not chosen by the nominating committee to fill one of the vacant seats. That minimum number assumes that no staff/contractors are present to also provide updates on things they're working on, nothing special like a "meet the candidates" session is going on which requires active participation from community members, etc.
This is why I would love a bare minimum of at least double that (30-50) so we don't need to get comfy with some technology and then have to scramble to find something else when our attendance needs go from 20 to 23 people or something.
Now, we do (and did this in Munich) employ Google Hangouts when (almost) the entire board is together in person, because the broadcast feature is a nice way of having a much more interactive public board meetings than the rest of our public board meetings year-round, which are phone + IRC-only. When the whole board is together that only counts for 1 of 10 slots, and 9 additional slots is fine for any board member or two who couldn't be there, and even some community participation.
But we can't simply can't choose a communication medium that would leave out a number of active participants by default. It doesn't make any sense.
I completely agree with you
I completely agree with you about the needs and requirements you lay out here. For scheduled board meetings and other more closed group meetings Hangouts isn't sufficient. Particularly when more than 10 people need to be active.
However, for something like the four "Questions for Candidates" sessions that has been going on the past week Hangouts would, in my opinion, have been an almost perfect choice. None of them had more than five candidates, plus Donna moderating to start with.
But my main reason for suggesting Hangout should have been used is how easy it would have been for everyone not just to participate, but also watch it.
But mostly because it would have made it extremely easy for anyone in the community to tune in and watch the lice session. Only a couple of clicks would be needed. Thus making it very easy to promote in tweets and other places just before as well.
As Steve starts in the OP:
This is a real problem we have. I have lost count on all the different services that has been used. Worst has been those times where the only way to participate by voice was to call a number on the phone. In this day of age that should simply just not happen.
As the DA and also the community is growing in communication needs other that our traditional, IRC and posts/comments on *.d.o mainly, we really need to have a serious look at finding and sticking to one solution that caters for the needs where for example Hangouts isn't enough.
Either that is an open source solution such as BBB or a commercial solution. I'm quite sure a commercial vendor would be happy to give us a great deal, maybe even fully sponsor us to use their solution. Drupal is a well known and respected open source project and the vendor will in return be able to not only use as in marketing, but a lot of our members will also get introduced to their platform and how it works.
What I particularly like about http://www.bigbluebutton.org/overview is that it is not only trying to be a great web meeting system, but also a virtual classroom. Thus I see many interesting use cases for us besides meeting needs. We all know we need to train more talent, maybe this could be a way to really make that happen on a larger scale?
As you know they are also open source and we can easily download and set up our own server.
That way we can integrate it on *.d.o in a similar way as git has been integrated. That would allow us to automatically store,, index and make recorded sessions easily available on d.o as well as integrate scheduling and other needs with for example our already existing d.o account.
These are things we then also work with their community on improving and create and awesome combination with BBB and Drupal.
Oki, better stop dreaming a bit here. Still I see many benefits with a collaboration such as that.
--
/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com
"most people" and Google accounts
"except the Google account then, but most people already have it" - how do I flag something as citation required?
Figures I've seen suggest 20 million hangout-capable Google accounts (July 2011, Larry Page phone call to analysts) out of 1.97 billion people online (2010, Pingdom based on InternetWorldStats.com). Even allowing that drupal users (especially on these pages) seem more willing/guillible for Google accounts than the average, and ignoring that the sort of people who use Google often seem to have multiple accounts, it's probably still a long way short. So I feel Google-account-required solutions are a big enough barrier that they should be avoided.
A commercial vendor would be OK, but it should be a commercial open source one, not a proprietary one that wants to abuse drupal for a bit of openwashing.
I think its quite safe to say
I think its quite safe to say that the likelihood that a d.o member have a Google account is much higher than they have an account for one of the web conference service providers.
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/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com
Web conference service
Web conference service providers are "cheaper" to sign up to because they can have simpler terms of service unconnected with advertising on other websites or any of the other evil things that Google do - or may do in the future, which Google require you to agree to now.
https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/ and particularly https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/ are pretty scary now. Surely they shouldn't be a condition of participation in d.o?
G+ Hangouts available for our popular OS's
Oh, just realized it hasn't been mentioned yet. Hangouts are available for all the popular OS's used in the community.
It also has quite descent system requirements as can be read at http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1216376.
At least for Android and iOS6 it is also available on phones and tablets.
Again, I'm not advocating using Hangouts for everything, just seriously consider it especially when we want to reach out to as many as possible in the community and make it really easy and convenient for them to tune in.
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/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com
Does it really work?
Google say it works, but they would, wouldn't they?
I tried clicking to install it on my Debian-based distribution and there were two problems: firstly, it wants me to install some dodgy plugin that isn't from debian or a distribution; secondly, when I click to download (so I could take a closer look), it offers me a Windows EXE file.
So I'm not convinced this actually works on Debian based Linux distributions. Even less that's it's easy or convenient.
I just installed it on my
I just installed it on my Ubuntu 12.04. It went like this:
1 - Clicked start a hangout
2 - Clicked Install plugin
3 - Got a list with 32/64 bit options for .deb/.rpm and it had correctly identified my computer as 64 bit .deb.
4 - Downloaded the plugin
5 - Opened it in Ubuntu Software Center
6 - Clicked install
7 - Clicked start a hangout again and it opened correct
Yes, it is a bit more complicated on Linux to get it installed. That, however, is a Linux usability/UX problem and not Google's fault.
On the other hand, it went far smoother to get it working that I expected actually.
Edit: Should probably also mention that I did this using Firefox and not the Chromium.
--
/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com
So it works on Ubuntu 12.04.
So it works on Ubuntu 12.04. It doesn't work on my Debian 6.0.5. Maybe Google should offer some way to override their Operating System detection that offers you deb and me EXE? I think that's why it breaks for me between steps 2 and 3. (I didn't do step 1 as I don't know where "start a hangout" it to click on.)
The usability/UX problem is definitely Google's fault, for treating Linux like Windows and only offering a dodgy download from their own site: it should release the plugin so the mainstream distribution package managers (synaptic, aptitude, and so on...) can install it through the normal audited and crypto-signed channels. After all, do we encourage people to release drupal modules through drupal.org or as dodgy downloads from their own sites?
"Start a hangaut" is in the
"Start a hangaut" is in the right sidebar on your G+ home screen. It will open a new window.
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/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com
apt is supported
At risk is of going way off topic, I thought I would clarify how easy it is get the gTalk plugin working on Ubuntu/Debian.
You will find that once the plugin is installed it will add Google's apt repo and key for the plugin so you can keep it up to date with apt. You'll find Chrome does the same thing.
If you want to use an apt sources.list entry to do the initial install try this:
My /etc/apt/trusted.gpg has the following entries:
[/OT]
If it's so easy, tell me how
If it's so easy, tell me how anyone is supposed to guess that apt repo/key?
The deb line you suggest returns 404 Not Found for me on update and changing deb to deb-src (so my system could build it myself) doesn't work either.
One package (the talk plugin) changing a configuration file of another package (apt) directly would be a violation of the debian quality assurance policy as I understand it. Maybe that's why this plugin is a clunky download from Google and not in the mainstream distribution systems.
Back on topic: I conclude that it seems Google Hangouts may only work on a few types of Linux, not even all Debian ones, and require all participants to have Google accounts.
Works fine on Debian 6.04
Although this now appears to have become a Google HOA help group, I couldn't believe there was such a problem.
So I downloaded a Live DVD of 64 bit Debian, started a hangout and was as above prompted to install the plugin, selected the correct version from the list, installed by R clicking and selecting package manager. Installs fine and Hangout works OK.
So no need to locate packages etc., just follow the prompts.
Nigel
Google account not needed to watch hangout On Air
Oh, and stupid me forgot that a Google Account actually isn't even needed to just watch a Google+ Hangout On Air. They are also broadcasted live on YouTube and can even be embedded on any page.
So, the only ones that actually need an account are those that will actively participate in the show.
Thus, all that is needed to see the show is to for example click on one link published in a tweet.
Can't be made simpler than that really...
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/thomas
T: @tsvenson | S: tsvenson.com
Doing Some Tests
I'm evaluating Drupal web conferencing for a client next week, and will be looking at Apache OpenMeetings, BigBlueButton, Twilio and VideoWhisper modules. I'll share my findings here.
The FAQ for BigBlueButton does say the client requires a web browser with Flash 10.3.
Apache OpenMeetings has a demo of a Drupal module, and it looks good, but they have taken the code offline (it's no longer here http://incubator.apache.org/openmeetings/DrupalPlugin.html ) because they are resolving legal issues. See this thread: http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-openmeetings-dev/2012...
Could somebody with the relevant skillz hold out a neighborly hand to the OpenMeetings crew and see if the legal issues can be overcome?
Joined forces?
I am also currently comparing several conferencing tools to build a service next to Drupal. Could we join our forces to get best results for all?
--
Perttu Ehn
Thanks for all joining in
Thanks for all joining in this discussion, it's great to see others are doing similar. Looks like we could perhaps split this up into two discussions based on our needs:
One of the main reasons I use Drupal is because I'm always in control(!) so it's a long-term solution for me, and using Drupal in the long term we could develop something which would cover a number of needs and fit our own requirements as opposed to having to restrict ours greatly by fitting into assumptions of our needs are.
There's a number of factors involved:
...and I'm sure many more.
Ideas?
Adding long term goal: passing the lemote test
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemote
Works on Ubuntu 12.04
Just tested on 64 bit Ubuntu 12.04 (Debian base) to an Android ICS device and works fine. I would have previously installed plugin as prompted and via software centre.
Tixeo
Have you tested the Tixeo video conferencing solution ? Because it's available as on promise solution.
http://www.tixeo.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpTCbrLt2vU
Just saw a post in
Just saw a post in BigBlueButton blog about that project advancing to use pure HTML5 client, ie. stop using Flash video. It is something to look for, IMO.
http://www.bigbluebutton.org/2012/10/02/progress-on-bigbluebutton-html5-...
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Perttu Ehn
We use BigBlueButton
We use BigBlueButton internally and it works great - we have had 30+ users sharing webcams with no issue and hardly any server load, works fine on Linux (including screensharing if you have a working Java), we use Freeswitch for audio and have Skype Manager to proxy Skype to SIP connections for international callers.
I think the main requirement it may not meet (depending on participant preferences) is requiring Adobe Flash for clients, but clearly some kind of client is needed, and I am pretty sure all the FOSS ones use Flash currently (HTML5 port being the future, but not there yet). The alternative would be to use a non-FOSS service that uses Java for cross-platform clients (Readytalk for instance) - however I suspect many people that don't want to run Flash are likely to have the same concerns about running closed source Java apps locally.
Web Conferencing
We use on premise RHUB web conferencing appliance in order to conduct webinars, online meetings, online presentations, etc. It is easy to use and is only onetime payment as compared to monthly payments by hosted services.
Choosing web conferencing
It all depends on the needs, f you are doing web conferencing on a professional and regular basis, I agree that hangouts may not be enough. There are different companies offering very affordable solutions and you don't have to worry if sometimes you need capacity for 4 people and the next for 50. As webchick said, you can go in more trouble if you get used to one system only to change it later. Bell offers different-needs solutions http://www.bell.ca/shop/Sb_viewProduct.page?sku=SB_PHO_CON