On Sun, Mar 14, 2010 at 02:41:44PM +0000, Nelson Marques wrote: > This would just make us closer I guess and communicate in real time. As > long as you have internet connection and some kind of microphone (all > laptops should be prepared for this under rough conditions), you can > communicate jsut like in IRC, but through voice). > > Even on those days when we're off work we can speak a bit about > everything and nothing if we have such service available, chill out, > laugh a bit with each other... The possibilities are kinda infinite. > > I guess ease of usage would a great pro. Asterisk has different goals > from this. Anyway, was just a suggestion. I was going to actually > mention Ventrilo, but found this open source software which seems to be > pretty good as well. Others have already pointed out that we have these exact features in Asterisk at talk.fedoraproject.org. You can setup a conference room which people can reach through a SIP client (softphone such as Ekiga or Twinkle, or a SIP handset.) It's integrated with Fedora, etc. and has a few direct-dial numbers for when people cannot get SIP to work. There is another and different point to discuss. When Fedora Infrastructure was first considering setting up talk.fp.org, Mike McGrath voiced a strong concern about what would happen with our radically transparent culture if we started conducting community business in voice rooms. Since then, we have had a number of informal discussions about this, and perhaps it's time to set up a wiki page and get down the specifics. (I added some of this content to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Talk .) For pure social communities, it is probably unimportant that voice chat creates a significant barrier to many potential participants. Social communities are somewhat selective by nature, and what one is socializing around is often exclusive-creating in itself, whether it's gaming or brew pubs. In an open source community of practice[1] such as the Fedora Project, it is a very important consideration. Here's a quick list of the problems that arise when voice is used as part of conducting community activities: * It excludes people who cannot hear, who cannot understand English, or cannot understand the accent of the speaker(s). Meetings that are conducted via voice exclude all of those people from participating. * It is difficult to obtain a log of the discussion (a transcript.) Any notes or summaries are always interpreted by the people doing the writing and generally focus on the conclusions and decisions. A chat log or a email list discussion can be archived and referred back to later to understand why something was done. * It's hard or impossible to have multiple threaded discussions in voice; generally only one person at a time can speak. This presents challenges to anyone who feels uncomfortable speaking in public or a group. People who can otherwise participate in a written English-only discussion may not be able to participate in a voice only discussion. * Translation is very difficult with voice, unless a full transcript is provided. This excludes a sizeable part of the Fedora contributors. The above is now at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Talk under the section "Why be careful?" Thanks for "listening" ;-) - Karsten [1] http://theopensourceway.org/wiki/Community_of_practice -- name: Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Sr. Community Gardener team: Red Hat Community Architecture uri: http://TheOpenSourceWay.org/wiki gpg: AD0E0C41
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