Re: VIrtual conference (was Re: Lua Workshop 2008 Announcements)

["Javier Guerra" <javier@...>]

On 2/28/08, Matt Campbell <mattcampbell@pobox.com> wrote:
> I like the idea of a virtual conference; it would eliminate the expense
>  and, for some, the difficulty of travel.  However, is video really worth

i doo think it's a great idea, and hope to make it possible.  i've
also toyed with the idea of giving a virtual presentation, since the
audience usually look more at the screen than at the presenter anyway.

>  the bandwidth it consumes?  I think audio plus slides (ideally delivered
>  as HTML) would be quite enough, except perhaps for a few presentations
>  which involve a live demo.  Eliminating video would probably make it
>  possible to host more participants.  Eliminating video would also reduce
>  hardware and software requirements; we wouldn't all have to be running
>  Leopard and iChat AV.  I think it would be quite enough to hear the
>  participants' voices, but then my perspective is probably different than
>  most, since I'm legally blind.

video bandwidth is getting lower and lower; and it's still a big part
of human-human communications.  i personally try do download slides
and videos of presentations where i couldn't go (almost all of them),
and my two cents:

1- video does help, a lot
2- when there's only video without slides, it's very hard for the
cameraman to follow appropiately, usually you either miss some slides,
or some important/funny gestures from the presenter.

the ideal would be to have both video and slides; even if the first is
heavily compressed and the slides are downloaded previously and you
try to read in sync.

and about interaction... maybe just IRC/Jabber, either the presenter
could read them live on a laptop, or a 'floor moderator' could read
them aloud for the presenter/live audience.


>  Anyway, I'd love to try it, so long as I don't have to get a Mac.

there's the darwin streaming server, which is open source, and has
several options for managing heavy loads, either live mirrors or
multicasting routers, or other things...

if the codec is open enough, any player should work

-- 
Javier