Tech Chats

Many of you are familiar with our Tech Talk sessions we have. What if we had a "Tech Chat" session where via IM we have some of our directors and other executives, developers, and project managers come and talk about different projects or technologies. If we do this, what topics are of interest? What technologies should we use to allow all to virtually attend? What times would be best?

Tom

Actually, I'd like to at least hear the voices. Submitting questions by IM or email or something is fine. But I think a lot information wouldn't said in all text format because typing is so much slower then talking. What's the possibilities of using the broadcast facilities that are used to broadcast General Conference via the Internet?

For work we use WebEx informally; you can share your desktop to broadcast PowerPoint sides. You can also group chat and/or post private comments. We usually have a dial in line, but you could just do chat. If you had a dial in line, probably would want everyone to be restricted to listen-only mode until a Q&A at the end.

Probably a weekday evening would be best, Tues-Thurs.

Topics:
new technology being rolled out in the next year
LUWS enhancements coming

I like the WebEx idea because it includes voice, visuals, and chat if you need it. Topics of most interest to me would be new developments, brainstorming on solutions to problems, and projects we could volunteer to help with.

Kathryn

RussellHltn wrote:Actually, I'd like to at least hear the voices. Submitting questions by IM or email or something is fine. But I think a lot information wouldn't said in all text format because typing is so much slower then talking. What's the possibilities of using the broadcast facilities that are used to broadcast General Conference via the Internet?

This would not be as interactive as I would like. I want a forum where people can ask questions and get direct responses.

Tom

tomw wrote:This would not be as interactive as I would like. I want a forum where people can ask questions and get direct responses.

Which part of my idea where you addressing? The partial text, or use of Internet broadcast facilities?

It sounded to me like the original proposal was all text. But if it's all text then I think th information content will be lower since most people can talk faster and easer then they can type. So at minimum I'd like to hear the voices of the church techs as they respond. If more can be done, then great.

Consider that if you have a web-tech talk, you're going to have a lot of questions thrown at you. It probably would be a good idea to combine, filter or otherwise process them. For us to submit questions and have the church tech respond via voice I think would be workable. If you want two way voice, so much the better, but then screening the questions would be harder.

I'm just tossing out ideas, not necessarily the best ones.

Sorry, forgot to mention what times would be best. I work full time so days are mostly out, though a lunch-time chat could work.

Evenings are probably best... 7:00 p.m. or later Pacific time. Tuesday nights are pretty much out right now, but some Wednesday or Thursday nights would work.

Kathryn

RussellHltn wrote:Actually, I'd like to at least hear the voices. Submitting questions by IM or email or something is fine. But I think a lot information wouldn't said in all text format because typing is so much slower then talking. What's the possibilities of using the broadcast facilities that are used to broadcast General Conference via the Internet?

It would be nice to hear voices but I also like the feedback of IM and although there are conferencing programs I don't know how reliable it would be with the active 200+ people all connecting to a single server.

tomw wrote:Many of you are familiar with our Tech Talk sessions we have. What if we had a "Tech Chat" session where via IM we have some of our directors and other executives, developers, and project managers come and talk about different projects or technologies. If we do this, what topics are of interest? What technologies should we use to allow all to virtually attend? What times would be best?

Tom

Topics of interest would be:

• Stake Conference Broadcasting and Building to Building Communications
• New FamilySearch (In depth)
• LUWS (2.0)?

If we have just text MSN IM, Yahoo IM, and others all work well.

Times would be after 7 MST.

RussellHltn wrote:Which part of my idea where you addressing? The partial text, or use of Internet broadcast facilities?

Sorry, I was referring to the Internet Broadcast Facilities.

Text does have the disadvantage of being slower than speach. We are looking at various technologies to host these talks.

Tom

On IM, Ive heard of an application that uses all three major IM programs, it can be found at http://www.trillian.cc so you only need one client to work with MSN, Yahoo, and AIM. Might be useful for those involved in leading the discussions if IM chat is used.

JamesAnderson wrote:On IM, Ive heard of an application that uses all three major IM programs, it can be found at www.trillian.cc so you only need one client to work with MSN, Yahoo, and AIM. Might be useful for those involved in leading the discussions if IM chat is used.

There are several products that are similar such as Gaim and Kopete. However none of these technologies merge the IM streams into 1. They just allow you to host all of your different IM accounts under one roof. But you cannot have someone on Yahoo speak to someone on AIM through these products as they are still very different networks.

Tom

A Webinar with people being able to submit questions via IM and email and then responses verbally over the Webinar would be what I think people are striving for. We have the technology in house to do it or there are local companies that do it well like Sorensen Media. (Yes I know the rules we don't post up vendor solutions, they were the technology that we originally used to do the conference broadcasting).

Does that sound more along the lines of what people were thinking? I think it would be great.

bh5k wrote:A Webinar with people being able to submit questions via IM and email and then responses verbally over the Webinar would be what I think people are striving for. We have the technology in house to do it or there are local companies that do it well like Sorensen Media. (Yes I know the rules we don't post up vendor solutions, they were the technology that we originally used to do the conference broadcasting).

Does that sound more along the lines of what people were thinking? I think it would be great.

Yeah, I think the concensus from everyone was that the best solution would have the flexibility to filter and prioritize questions via some text interface (IM or email), and that the actual presentation would be video (or at least voice) to speed up how much material can be covered (because speaking is faster than typing).

mkmurray wrote:Yeah, I think the concensus from everyone was that the best solution would have the flexibility to filter and prioritize questions via some text interface (IM or email), and that the actual presentation would be video (or at least voice) .

Yes, that's how I've seen it done when I got to various webenars for my job. Sometimes the whole thing is part of one software package, and sometimes it seems to be a mix of packages.

I'd hate to start a platform debate, but does Microsoft or any other company provide a web conference platform that 1.) The Church has access to and the techs have experience managing and 2.) Is widely available enough that end users could easily tune in through common software or small downloads?

WebEx, Office LiveMeeting, etc...?

kgthunder wrote:I'd hate to start a platform debate, but does Microsoft or any other company provide a web conference platform that 1.) The Church has access to and the techs have experience managing and 2.) Is widely available enough that end users could easily tune in through common software or small downloads?

WebEx, Office LiveMeeting, etc...?

I remember that Microsoft had NetMeeting and I used that, but that product has been replaced and I only know that most of it's technologies have been implemented in MSN Messenger.