[kwlug-disc] FLOSS-friendly, usable webconferencing

[Gordon Dey]

The TESL people had successfully used BigBlueButton for up to 200
simultaneous webinar participants. To pass that limit, now members have
to register with zoom.us and webinars are delivered through zoom.us.

BBB worked decently well, although I recall it needing flash for some
things. I installed it at work once (a while back) to play, and it was
surprisingly easy. The company had bought into cisco's conference tools
(webex) though. kwlug would either need to rent a bbb instance or self-host.

Basic zoom is "free". They have a version of the app for 12.04 and 14.04
ubuntu, suggesting that they quit supporting it 6 years ago. Luckily,
one can open a chrome browser window in 18.04.4, cancel the request to
xdg_open, and it works passible well to attend a webinar. kwlug would
need to purchase a zoom account, however to host webinars.

The other point to note, is that running a webinar-like meeting requires
at least two other moderator-type people. One to sort out the steady
stream of user questions and comments, and the other to manage the
presentation system and presenters.

Gord.