Video Conferencing software

OK my original question that I wanted to ask the Loomio Software Development team - was this:

There currently seems to be NO video conferencing software in the whole world that can queue people up automatically in a realtime democratic way to speak for large groups of people. Our Australian political Party - “Online Direct Democracy” formally “Senator Online” - currently uses the Google Hangout Software for Video Conferencing for our own Internal Party decision making - with groups of up to 11 people. We also (of course) use Loomio itself to make decisions. Loomio is far far easier to make decisions than Video conferencing - but occasionally we need to gather everyone in the same cyberspace at the same time to collectively solve a problem. (And it feels nice - to actually “see” and “hear” people - it fosters a sense of trust - and you can more easily understand people’s personalities)

So I am wondering whether LOOMIO could create a PAID PREMIUM SERVICE for its clients that would include Video Conferencing for large groups of people. Some of the things that we as a party require this future software to do is to automatically queue people up for speaking. By this I mean for example “Anne” is currently talking and has been talking for about 3mins… Towards the end of her speech she suddenly inspires 4 others to reply to her or to raise a similar topic/idea. Currently as Google Hangout works - ALL 4 start trying to talk after Anne has finished. This leads to some microphones being muted - and general confusion - and a lot of - “oh sorry you go” etc etc… Could there be a solution to this? Could the solution be that as Anne was talking that Tom, Peter, Paul & Mary press a green button called NEXT as soon as they have an idea and want to talk? If Mary pressed the button 2 seconds before Tom - then Mary would automatically be queued up to speak next, followed by Tom etc etc. Everyone would see on the screen who is queued up next…. You could even have a time limit warning on each speaker - a clock countdown or polite reminder that you maybe “hogging” the meeting.

It would also be good if you could have a “like” button or a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” button - to use WHILST people are speaking….which would give realtime feedback to the speaker without 15 people trying to all say at once “yes - i agree with you”…

So does anyone think this could be possible?

Kind regards,
Oliver Minter
Online Direct Democracy Party (Australia)
https://www.facebook.com/oddemocracy

Interesting idea @OliverMinter

I guess I don't really understand why we need to build a new solution, when we can achieve this with existing videoconferencing tools and some speaking protocols. It seems like is a problem to be solves with facilitation rather than software.

I honestly prefer to avoid using meetings (of any sort) to make decisions. It often seems to devolve into coercive pressures, both before and during such meetings. That's one reason I like Loomio.

What is the largest completely interactive video conference that loomio itself has held online? And which software did you guys use?

@alanna

@OliverMinter we regularly have member meetings with google hangouts. Usually 5 or so people join in via hangouts and many more in person.

We're focused on written communication in Loomio for the time being.. it's something quite different to video or in person communication.

Also.. Don't believe the hype. I think it's very unlikely that we could do a better job of building online video conferencing software than Google. It's nice of you to consider us for it.. but ours does not exist.. which makes it perfect in theory.. and useless in practice.

ok... well atleast i'm happy to hear that you guys are using Google Hangouts for online meetings - because that is what we are doing. And yes Greg, I am totally aware that for us atleast, (and you) written online collaboration is much more effective than an online meeting... but sometimes we just have to hold an online meeting... 5 people is completely manageable - but when we need to hold online meetings with 20+ members - i personally dont have any idea how we are going to be able to manage them. I guess your right - you just try to avoid meetings... but what about AGM's - (in person and online)? How do you all vote at an AGM online?

@OliverMinter I would suggest that you change your practices. Have online discussions and when you think you've reached agreement, don't vote. Just assign someone the task of capturing the details in a loomio proposal and let that play out in its own time. The same thing for when discussions are too boring or there is detail that people don't want to have to take in at the moment, just say "We'll move this discussion to loomio and move on to the next topic"

Thank you Oliver for your additional feedback. I'd like to clarify that I'm not anti-meeting per se! People should interact richly when they can. :) Also, I'm not expecting organizations in general to suddenly abandon decision-making meeting agendas. I'm just expressing a strong personal preference.

Your question about AGMs is 100% valid, and I guess Google Hangouts is about the best anyone can do right now. There are other options, but I doubt they'll be able to hang well with Google. (Who knows.)

@chelsearobinson and I recently participated in a video conference call with about 100 people. It was really interesting. There was a moderator and we were the featured speakers, and to facilitate discussion people typed questions into the chat box and we read them and responded. If someone wanted to speak more in-depth they signaled in the chat and we verbally called them by name and they unmuted and spoke. Worked pretty well.

I think this is down to good facilitation more than software. If people use protocols such as rounds, a talking stack, a designed agenda, and a named moderator, you can have a discussion with large numbers of people that functions well.... the scenario on video chat is not that different than an in-person meeting.

Another interesting idea would be for people to record video response to a prompt and then everyone can watch each other's messages.

We've also done interesting processes where we, for example, were collaboratively interviewing candidates for a job, but in our network of 250 at Enspiral no one person was making the decision. We had a Loomio discussion where we posted their application materials and people submitted questions, then had a google hangout with a panel of about 5 people who asked the group's questions to the candidate and facilitated a discussion with them. We recorded the hangout so everyone could watch later and then used Loomio to decide who to hire.

Thanks @alanna that is invaluable information!

@OliverMinter the lack of free code alternatives to proprietary live conference software like Skype is a problem I've been studying for years. A number of new technologies have emerged over the last couple of years, some of them ready for us, others still in the works.

The biggest news of the moment is WebRTC (RealTime Communication), which has been developed mainly by Google and Mozilla as an open protocol, and is currently making its way through the IETF (Internet Engineering TaskForce) standards process. The goss is that Hangouts will eventually switch to WebRTC:
http://bit.ly/1H71JKN

There are a number of WebRTC demos you can use for free. My favourite one so far is Subrosa.io. The entire code is licensed under GNU GPL, and you can use it through a web browser, or for more techy users, compile the client software for use on your desktop.

Another project worth checking out is BigBlueButton.org (v0.9 just released), also a voice/video conferencing platform, but designed as a tool for teaching online courses.

Finally, there is Tox (tox.chat). Still in the very early stages of development, Tox is intended as a freedom and privacy respecting video conferencing app which is totally peer-to-peer (as Skype kind of used to be, but isn't really anymore http://zd.net/1EZc8C1). Tox is both a protocol and a set of platform specific clients for connecting over that protocol.

Edit: corrected Tox link and added clarification about its protocol/ clients.

BTW I agree with @alanna that existing vanilla video conferencing can be used with the same sorts of facilitation tools used in in-person meetings. However, while it's possible to do consensus on email lists and forums without any straw poll engine, having Loomio code in tools like taking and modifying positions (agree, disagree etc) and visualizing them on the pie chart makes the process much more stream-lined. So I also agree with @OliverMinter that video conference software which coded in tools like speaking order, and direct response, would be helpful.

I use talky.io and have better experiences than google hangouts https://talky.io/

They have a live kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/talky/talky-the-first-truly-simple-video-chat

@simontegg - how does talky.io compare to https://jitsi.org/ ? (Another OS candidate, that I have used, with middling success. Talking and side chat went well, screen shares did not.)

The main difference is that you don't need to download anything or install plugins. It just spins up peer connections between the clients visiting the room url.

Its a great example of how software-based on open standards (WebRTC) can have better UX than platform or desktop centric solutions.

Looks like talky.io only allows 5 people to connect at once? Seems limiting.

@alanna their kickstarter is targeting 15 people.

@alanna these kinds of limitations are usually due to the cost of bandwidth, as opposed to the technical limitations of the software. If I remember rightly, Loomio used to have a maximum limit on members in any group for similar reasons. If an organisation set up their own instance of a WebRTC-based system like Subrosa.io or Talk.io, I assume they could support many more people in a chat.

@bobhaugen SIP clients like Jitsi are usually voice only, and the biggest headache is usually getting everyone to figure out how to connect to a SIP server. For voice-only conferencing, Mumble is probably easier to use for now using a server like Mumble.co.nz. The GNU telephony project has built a minimal SIP server, SIPWitch, which users can run on their own computer, and wants to resolves SIP headaches by building a user app on top of that, but don't hold your breath ;)

BTW Just learned that BigBlueButton still has legacy Flash dependencies. Flash is toxic, so I withdraw my endorsement of BBB until it becomes HTML5-compliant.

@simontegg jitsi meet don't need any download. try it here:
https://meet.jit.si
jitsi meet is the best solution right now because bypass webrtc limitations:
https://jitsi.org/Projects/JitsiVideobridgePerformance

another option could be a SaaS offering like:
www.zoom.us or www.sightcall.com

Yet another reason to find an alternative to MS Skype.

Has anyone else tried Firefox Hello? At this point it's one-on-one chat only, but it supports voice and video well, and it's really easy to initiate a chat in the browser. One person initiates, then Hello gives them a link to send (via email, XMPP or whatever) to the person they want to talk to.

@strypey firefox hello depends on a third party server that's not free software to give you the url address. after that any communication should be p2p. i don't know if there's something libre that does the same...

@oscarfonseca1 that Jitsi link goes straight to a list of supported browsers, Chrome (proprietary spyware), Chromium (the libre browser Chrome is built on top of, controlled by Google, so also liable to have spyware), Opera (proprietary), and Firefox Nightly (who uses this?). Most WebRTC-based solutions are already much better supported than this.

@fauno that's annoying about Hello. Given than Mozilla are a not-for-profit "open source" organisation, there's really no reason they should be using a nonfree server for a Mozilla branded service. However, I assume it's just Mozilla's attempt at WebRTC, so you could say that Subrosa is "something libre that does the same" ;)

@strypey Jitsi is webrtc based ;) but circumvents the p2p limitation using a videbridge that allows multiuser video communication beyond 5 people scope. Firefox will be supported with version 40 more info here
link corrected to https://meet.jit.si

As I said to @alanna , my assumption was that 5 people is the limit of Talky.io, not a limit of WebRTC, and since Jitsi Videobridge (LGPL) also uses WebRTC, that seems to confirm that assumption. My understanding of WebRTC is that conversations are P2P, so the server doesn't end up being an expensive bottleneck, it just helps the peers get connected. The specs of the protocol explain exactly how it's supposed to work.

Glad to hear full Firefox support for Videobridge is coming, which means support for IceCat and ABrowser (which is what I use) will follow in due course.

Came here to say -- +1 for talky.io, which has worked great for me -- but good points @alanna and others regardign

Professional badass Jacob Appelbaum (WikiLeaks, Tor Project, Snowden docs, etc) loves Jitsi and recommends it a lot, so I should try that, too.

I'm curious about the security implications of using Jitsi as a desktop app versus the WebRTC-based web app! Anyone know about that trade-off?

I tested palava.tv the other day. Palava is in the FSF's Free Software Directory, so it's pretty legit. Unfortunately the Palava.tv implementation wasn't that great for us. Voice and video did work, but with too much jitter and lag to really have a conversation on it.

I've tried Subrosa.io again recently, and sadly it seems to have stopped working. I've tried contacting the maintainers but no reply so far. I'm really keen to try Tox. If anyone would like to test with free code video chat candidates with me, flick me an email at strypey-(at)-disintermedia-[dot]-net-{dot}-nz.

Edit: added update on Subrosa.io

Another tool which helps with facilitation of online meetings is Clarity Rainbow, created and hosted by Rimu, an online version of the 'coloured cards' system used by some CoHousing group:
http://clarity.rimu.geek.nz/

By pressing a button, you can indicate 'process states':
* Listening
* I want to talk
* Direct response
* Point of order

... or 'decision-making states':
* Agree
* Do not agree
* Oppose
* Block

Each person in a meeting can see the state of every other person, and the facilitator can see at a glance if anyone wants to speak, or whether they are agree with what's being said. It's like Loomio Live! :)

Finally got the upgrades to ABrowser 40 (a libre distribution of Firefox), and Firefox 40 on my fiancee's MacBook. Can now use Meet.jit.si. Video works, but will need to test with someone to see if sounds works, and how well conferencing goes compared to palava.tv.

The NZ Open Source Society have set up an instance of RocketChat if anyone wants to try it out.