[vox] Fwd: [BALUG-Talk] Great Success - VOIP Netcast - Nov 18 BALUG

[john_re]

Sent to LUGOD cause we had 2 LUGOD members attend.

==
Back last Nov 18, only about 15 hours before the meeting, I, john_re,
decided I'd try (see footnote *1) to arrange to receive a VOIP netcast
of that evening's BALUG talk.   Silly me.

Great success.

With less than 1 hour's notice,
BALUG member Eric
was able to stream audio 
from the speaker Sean Moss-Pultz, founder & CEO of The OpenMoko Project,
through his (Eric's) cell phone,
out of the Four Seas,
(electromagnetic waves, photons, electrons, and a computer I'm not sure
where, were involved),
calling into an Ekiga.net VOIP conference server,
which streamed audio to up to 7 listeners,
typically about 5-6,
throughout the Greater "Bay Area",
(Go "Greater BA-LUG"!  More than a newspaper!!!)
who listened variously on both INet computer VOIP & cell phone,
(& communicated in a Freenode #balug IRC channel)
for the full talk of about an hour,
including: SanJose, Oakland, Berkeley, SanFrancisco & 2 LUGOD listeners, 
about half who saw the announcement on local LUG lists with only about
10 minutes advance notice.

Cool.

Using the BerkeleyTIP-Global VOIP technology.   Cool.

(BerkeleyTIP-Global - a little monthly global BSD GNU(Linux) FreeSW, HW
& Culture meeting I put together.
http://groups.google.com/group/BerkTIPGlobal
1st Saturday of each month, Feb 7 next meeting,
Come join the meeting in Berkeley, or online using VOIP.
http://groups.google.com/group/BerkTIPGlobal/web/irc-voip   )


Major major props & thanks to both Eric, & Big Dan.

Major props to community teamwork.  :)


=====
I decided to just do it (try to put the netcast together)
1) Because _I_ wanted to hear the talk,
2) because I thought (correctly) _others_ would appreciate the
opportunity, &
3) just to see if the community could accomplish it on such a short
notice.  ;)

=====
Audio intelligibility was instantaneously from 0 - 100%, typically about
50-85%, IMO.  (Eric said the speaker was inconsistent in his holding &
use of the handheld microphone. - Something to be alert for next time,
which would greatly increase the intelligibility of the speech.)

Basically all attendees who listened for most of the hour thought it was
a valueable experience, & I received "thank you"s from most listeners
for having arranged the netcast.

=====
Also - major thanks to Sean, Andrew, Michael, & everyone else involved
in BALUG management, speaker & meeting arrangement, web page & mailing
list maintenance, etc, now & throughout the years, whose shoulders' we
all stand on.   :)

=====
Stay tuned for the next impromptu BALUG VOIP streaming announcement,
same Berk-Time, __same__ Berk-Channel!

Hope to see you there  -  in _cyber_-space.   <8-Q


=====================================================================
Footnote *1:
[BALUG-Talk] You source audio stream from BALUG tonight?
http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk-balug.org/2008-November/004306.html

after some edifying tele-permission-asking & community
talki-discussi-fying all around:
[BALUG-Talk] Tele-questioning Re: [BALUG-Announce] OpenMoko CEO @ BALUG
(Tuesday Nov 18)
http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk-balug.org/2008-November/004289.html