The asterisk paradox

[Jonathan Steffan]

On Fri, 2007-08-10 at 11:51 -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
> Jonathan Steffan wrote:
> > On Fri, 2007-08-10 at 11:30 -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
> >   
> >> There was some discussion at the last meeting about how to use asterisk 
> >> in the future for meetings or even if we should.  This has brought up an 
> >> interesting problem:
> >>
> >> Early adoption of asterisk is slow because not everyone has the 
> >> equipment to use it.  People don't feel compelled to get the equipment 
> >> because adoption is slow.
> >>
> >> So what do we do about it?  I feel very strongly asterisk as a medium is 
> >> much more efficient to use then IRC and helps bring the team together to 
> >> work as a more cohesive unit.  I also believe it will do the same for 
> >> other groups.  But we cannot do the meetings in asterisk at this time 
> >> because it raises the barrier to entry by too much and provides no 
> >> meeting logs.  So I'd like to propose the following possible solutions.
> >>
> >> 1)  Meet 15 minutes before or after the meeting for a 
> >> supplemental-meeting in asterisk to shake out some things.  Then 
> >> continue with the meeting in IRC as normal.
> >> 2)  Meetings in IRC are generally very slow, it might be worth it to do 
> >> the meetings as normal but also have people log in to asterisk to bs and 
> >> generally just chat, get to know each other a bit better.
> >> 3) Do as we did last week, have people who can't talk join the 
> >> conference anyway and ask questions in the chat room while having 
> >> someone transcribe and provide minutes.
> >>     
> >
> > +1
> >   
> Jonathan, IIRC you were one of the team members that didn't have a 
> microphone.  How did that work for you?

If we are to use voice seriously, I would get a good microphone. I will
just need to know what the plan is.

The last meeting was lacking a true "transcriber" and there were some
non-syncs between voice and non-voice users. If most people at least
listened to the conference, it would not be as bad. I do think that we
should have a per meeting appointed transcriber that tries to bring
terse statements into irc or we find some voice to text software to test
out. There was a nice lag when I was asked questions over voice and then
needed to answer over irc, but it did not bother me.

Overall I really enjoyed it even with not being able to talk back via
voice and request we move forward in building what needs to be built to
make this a viable meeting solution.

Jonathan Steffan
daMaestro