RE: WebEx woes

Hi Chris, et al. - Darn! Echoing Arnaud's comments .. that's so aggravating and not viable.

Now that the W3C as a whole has shifted to WebEx, how is it working for all the 100s of other people in other groups, dialing in from non-North America locations?  Surely you aren't the only ones having problems.  Is the issue that you (whoever is having this problem) don't want to install the Java bit for WebEx, OR the technical difficulties (which are what?), OR both, OR something else?

As for alternatives, I am sorry to say, Mumble - or any software I have to download - will not work for me. We have a firm enterprise prohibition against installing non-Boeing standard software.  (WebEx is widely used here, so that works fine for me.)  A workaround for me might be to attend these meeting from home, for which I could use my personal laptop.

Keen to hear more from W3C Team on how WebEx is going with other groups -- Ann




From: Arnaud Le Hors [mailto:lehors@us.ibm.com]
Sent: Monday, August 17, 2015 2:43 PM
To: Christopher Allan Webber
Cc: public-socialweb@w3c.org
Subject: Re: WebEx woes

Hi Chris,
I'm sorry to hear about your troubles. I think no matter what we use for voice we will want to stick to IRC for logging, queueing, etc.

How many people has Mumble been successfully used with? It's one thing for a system to handle a handful of people it's another for it to handle a dozen. These things can quickly degrade as the number increases. Maybe we could try and if it doesn't work fallback onto WebEx.

When the W3C announced the sunsetting of Zakim they said they were continuing to investigate other possibilities. Maybe the team (Sandro, Harry, Wendy) could give us an update as to whether any progress has been made on this front? I'd like to know whether they looked into Mumble for example.
--
Arnaud  Le Hors - Senior Technical Staff Member, Open Web Technologies - IBM Software Group


Christopher Allan Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org<mailto:cwebber@dustycloud.org>> wrote on 08/11/2015 10:24:13 AM:

> From: Christopher Allan Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org<mailto:cwebber@dustycloud.org>>
> To: public-socialweb@w3c.org<mailto:public-socialweb@w3c.org>
> Date: 08/17/2015 01:22 PM
> Subject: WebEx woes
>
> Hello,
>
> So I've been lucky enough to be able to participate on the calls because
> there's a US number, but it is difficult for those do not want to
> install a proprietary java application, or have had technical
> difficulties doing so.  Jessica did not make it into the last meeting
> because she could not find a workaround, for instance.
>
> I know that for non-US participants, it has been hard to dial in.  I
> wonder how well we might do by moving to another VoIP project that is
> free software based, namely either:
>
>  - Use something WebRTC based, since there are a few options
>    (yes, I know there are serious problems with WebRTC stuff and
>    connectivity that we've experienced though)
>
>  - Potentially we could use Mumble; Mumble is FOSS and is kind of like
>    IRC + VoIP, and we could even use my server if need be (I know others
>    who run servers as well).  Jessica Tallon and I have been doing calls
>    on it with no trouble.  Recently Aaron, Amy and I all did a call over
>    Mumble, and it worked fine with the exception that Aaron ran into a
>    problem with Mumble on OSX where it would echo other participants
>    back to the group, which was remedied by using "push to talk".  Call
>    quality was great, and if we can have people stick to ordered
>    conversation (which we already do) maybe there would be no problem.
>
>  - Are there other options?
>
> WDYT everyone?  I'm grateful that the W3C has taken time to try to
> figure out some sort of solution, but it seems like WebEx is not working
> for many.
>
>  - Chris
>