Being active in the dutch green-left party Groenlinks... what's that?

Thursday, November 30, 2006

internet question: GL meetings online AND alive

A question for the experts out there:

I want the possibility that GL meetings can be visited online. The idea would be to have a computer with camera in the meeting, so that people that want to attend, but is far away, or has to stay home babysitting... could log in and attend the meeting from home. So, I want to simply setup a videoconference system, so that members prevented to show up in the vergaderzaal could follow it (and participate in it) from elsewhere.

That would require some software. I can imagine several possibilities, but probably there are some of you people that do this already (for fun, or for your jobs). Any suggestion how to set it up?

Perhaps needles to say, this idea comes from the situation at the Kleurrijk Platform. We want to involve "multicultis" that are active locally... but it is hard to get somebody from say groningen to come regularly to meetings in Utrecht, or in A'dam. The participation drempel would be lowered if we have a videoconference system. Not to mention travelling costs... both in money and in pollution! I suppose that the idea could be useful for other landelijke werkgroepen... maybe some do it already?

I'll be looking forward to reactions...

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

In Den Haag, we are experimenting a bit with this for our local ALV's. We have a camcorder, that hooks up to my laptop (through firewire). On my laptop I run the ffmpeg software, which outputs a stream to one of my servers in the xs4all datacenter in Amsterdam. People then go with their web browsers to the server, and see/hear the ALV.

Why this indirection? Well, simply because the bandwidth from the vergaderzaal to the outside in our case is quite limited. We can only get one viewer there. So this one viewer is the server (which as a lot of bandwidth available), from which multiple viewers can then access the stream.

For interaction the other way around, we are currently thinking about a chat application, where we project the contents of the chat channel with a beamer. I don't think it is very practical to have everyone have a video feed back to the meeting..

Koen

12:22 AM

 
Blogger Unknown said...

Thanks Koen! I was not thinking in ALVs, but that is surely useful as well. If people in the Utrecht bestuur cares, I'll ask your expertice :-) For the werkgroep I am thinking in some with interactivity as usefull... but maybe we can start with the video option...

7:33 AM

 
Blogger Wilfred Rubens said...

I definitely am in favour of applications like Macromedia Breeze to have online meetings (is there a good OSS alternative). But I also would be glad to have a web-based community to enhance communication.

9:03 AM

 
Blogger Unknown said...

Hey wilbert, txs! I check the page of breeze... but it costs 300$ a month (five users)! or 300$ per meeting of two hours with five people online... sounds like too much for GL.

I think (or hope?) that a cheaper software will be available around...

9:21 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I wouldn't go for the macromedia crap anyway, unless you want to restrict your attention to windows users only :(

9:52 AM

 
Blogger Unknown said...

tja... breeze is unpayable, I think... let's see what others say...

11:08 AM

 

Post a Comment

<< Home