Re: Migration to Google Meet

Hi all,

Following up on this thread based on the discussion in the CCG call around
migration from Jitsi.

The most important point was that, Manu and the Digital Bazaar team no
longer intend to volunteer their time and money to support and host the
Jitsi infrastructure we are using.
This means, unless someone else is willing to volunteer to take this
significant burden on for the community we will be migrating from Jisti
soon.

I am sure I speak for everyone, when I express the communities gratitude
for the tireless work that went in behind the scenes to make the Jitsi
infrastructure a viable and smooth experience - albeit with its quirks.

Manu stated a strong preference for Google Meet as he has managed to
extract the recordings and minutes from Google Meet meetings into a server
we control - something not possible with zoom. This approach is already
being used for the VC-API and Data Integrity calls. Note, the transcription
tool we using in Jisti is the Google Meet transcription tool.

An alternative could be Zoom, with manual IRC scribing. This has some
positives, e.g. live transcription of the call and human discretion about
what is scribed. However, the overhead is we would have to find scribes
each call and people would need to learn how to use IRC.

So unless anyone feels strongly that Zoom is a better approach *and* is
willing to put the effort in to make it work, my personal opinion is we
start migrating to a Google Meet infrastructure.

The steps we need to take to make this happen are:

1. Setup a CCG enterprise google account
2. Configure the system to export the transcriptions and recordings
3. Update the calendar items

Let me know if I have missed anything.

If you have any concerns, comments or questions related to this, please
feel welcome to share them in this thread.

Additionally, Manu mentioned it might be worth trying to get the recordings
published to YouTube. I think that is a great idea, to increase the reach
and accessibility of these calls.
Would anyone be willing to help the chairs make this happen?

Thanks,
Will & CCG Chairs


On Wed, Mar 12, 2025 at 6:56 PM Harrison <harrison@spokeo.com> wrote:

> Hi Sarven,
>
> Thanks for your input.  We ran out of time during this Tuesday's meeting,
> so we will hold a more in-depth discussion on this topic next Tuesday
> 3/18.  Please feel free to join it if you are available.
>
> The main reason why the co-chairs are proposing to use a more mainstream
> (although closed) system like Google Meet or Zoom is that we want to make
> it easier for the general public to join our W3C CCG calls.  While Jitsi
> works most of the time, it has been unstable during presentations,
> occasionally crashing and requiring participants to rejoin.  We ask
> participants to keep their cameras off to prevent crashes, which limits
> engagement.  Sometimes participants would experience audio issues when
> using non-Chrome browsers.  And the transcription does not work for
> participants outside of the US and Canada.
>
> The co-chairs would also like to propose new meeting formats, such as
> breakout room discussions, to diversify and grow our audience
> participation.
>
> Due to the above, we think Google Meet or Zoom might work better than
> Jitsi.  That being said, we welcome all feedback, and we will continue to
> use Jitsi before a decision is made.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> *Harrison Tang*
> CEO
>  LinkedIn  <https://www.linkedin.com/company/spokeo/> •   Instagram
> <https://www.instagram.com/spokeo/> •   Youtube <https://bit.ly/2oh8YPv>
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 10, 2025 at 2:22 AM Sarven Capadisli <info@csarven.ca> wrote:
>
>> On 2025-03-09 17:53, Manu Sporny wrote:
>> > On Wed, Mar 5, 2025 at 9:03 PM Harrison <harrison@spokeo.com> wrote:
>> >> The co-chairs will also propose some new meeting formats to help drive
>> our community engagement and grow our audience.
>> >
>> > I noted during the last call that the Chairs intend to suggest a move
>> > to Zoom or Google Meet from our open source Jitsi meeting solution
>> > that we use today. We've contemplated this move multiple times over
>> > the last 11 years, mostly because Jitsi has proven to be unstable to
>> > some (though, has also captured almost every single meeting we've had
>> > over the past 11 years, with a log, with a bridge to IRC, with
>> > advanced queueing support, with web-page generation and links to key
>> > topics/decisions, etc.).
>> >
>> > The culture of people using the Web has shifted over the last decade
>> > or two, away from using systems that we control to using centralized
>> > solutions in exchange for convenience. Ideally, we don't have to
>> > exchange convenience for control, but that's what we're doing by using
>> > Zoom or Google Meet (or any other rented communication platform,
>> > really). I'm usually one of the people that argues strongly in the
>> > direction of running systems that we control, even if it's less
>> > convenient, or it costs more... but the people willing to maintain and
>> > improve those systems have been few and far between.
>> >
>> > Here we are again, contemplating the use of closed systems to create
>> > open standards... and I'm exhausted by the debate and I'm exhausted by
>> > maintaining our current system as well.
>> >
>> > So, rather than push back this time, I spent yesterday trying to save
>> > the one thing we really need: A record of our meetings so that we can
>> > push back against trolls that might try to inject submarine patents or
>> > bully us behind unrecorded meetings. This happened repeatedly before
>> > we recorded meetings, and the recordings largely fixed those issues
>> > which many of the  more recent participants had the benefit of not
>> > experiencing.
>> >
>> > The following tool will allow us to schedule meetings using Google
>> > Meet, and keep recordings and transcriptions (and backups) on our own
>> > infrastructure (like we do today):
>> >
>> > https://github.com/w3c-ccg/cg-archiver/
>> >
>> > We lose the generation of linkable web pages for our meetings, email
>> > archival of meetings, marking topics and subtopics in our minutes,
>> > linking to specific lines in our minutes, control/debug of the bot via
>> > IRC, having fine grained control over the minutes we generate, etc.
>> > What we gain is convenience of not having to maintain the meeting
>> > infrastructure by having Google do it for us. I'm fairly certain we
>> > can get back to feature parity in time, if people volunteer to add the
>> > features back, which I doubt will happen given the last decade's track
>> > record.
>> >
>> > In any case, we have a path forward and we should take it so that we
>> > can stop having this endless debate and get on to the more meaningful
>> > creation of open standards to re-decentralize the Web and Internet.
>> >
>> > -- manu
>> >
>>
>>
>> I'm not a regular on the calls, but I really appreciate CG's approach
>> and its commitment to using solutions that align with its goals.
>>
>> I don't fully understand the technical or social reasons for switching
>> to closed systems with questionable practices when the open solution has
>> worked so well for so long. Is something broken? What's the fix? Or what
>> specific conveniences make the trade-off worthwhile? If there's
>> documentation on this, I'd love to check it out. These lessons could
>> benefit the wider W3C community. Jitsi has served other groups well in
>> advancing open standards.
>>
>> Also, will there be any steps to ensure that participants are aware of
>> how their information (text, voice, etc.) is processed in the new setup?
>>
>> And, thanks to Manu and everyone who has put so much time and care into
>> this over the years. Many of us have benefited from this work. In this
>> context, it's about as close as it gets to eating our own dog food and
>> staying true to the spirit of open initiatives.
>>
>> -Sarven
>> https://csarven.ca/#i
>>
>>