Join the next 27 or Geekdinner remotely!

Hmmm… only kidding, but why the hell not?! Why can we (those of us out in the sticks or who didn’t get a spot on the wiki) not join in on the great talks and share in the happiness and fun? Surely the venue can be picked to have a half decent adsl connection and whoever wants to join remotely can hook up with Skype and share the experience. As long as we can listen to what is said, it should be sufficient. I’d be more than happy with that. A video connection would be first choice, but I will not be that picky yet…

Even afterwards, if remote users are online, others attending the dinner can either connect using their laptops and chat to the remotes should they like to or the PC used to broadcast could be used to have a public conversation.

This is afterall geek gatherings, so why not go ubergeek with it and let anyone from anywhere join the fun. Same goes for people not getting a spot due to late registration on the wiki, could still participate in some way. I know the main thing about a dinner is the networking happening after the talks, but still, some of the talks is very interesting and should be shared!

I’m not entirely sure how practical something like this would be or what issues we’ll end up facing, but I think if we don’t try, we’ll never know!

So, Mike and Dave and all others, how about it? Can we give something like this a bash? If there is anyone with any good ideas on how to sufficiently set something like this up, speak-up man!

Blogged with Flock

Tags: 27dinner, geekdinner, socialnetworking

5 Comments to "Join the next 27 or Geekdinner remotely!"

• Charl van Niekerk said: On 08/02/2007 at 5:22 pm

  Firstly, I think IRC will be ideal for this kind of situation. It’s open standards-based, many clients available for virtually all platforms, there’s lots of South African IRC networks, etc. I can’t even use Skype from Linux anymore which is seriously anti-geek. And with Skype one will probably have to invite every single user while on IRC they can just join themselves.

  As far as a one-way audio stream is concerned, the maximum upload speed of Telkom ADSL is 384kbps (and that’s on a 4mbps account). One could not accommodate many clients through such a connection. You’ll have to upload it to a well-connected server and then let others stream it from the server. If the server is on the South African backbone it will be ideal since you could access it using local-only ADSL.

  Since running such a server would be very expensive, I would strongly recommend using a decentralised approach. There are some implementations of peer-to-peer audio streaming out there but this does not seem to be commonly used in South Africa yet. Skype is peer to peer but not sufficiently advanced for massive broadcasts.

• Charl van Niekerk said: On 08/02/2007 at 5:29 pm

  Sorry man, forgot to provide some useful links.

  http://furion.org/ (Very cool South African IRC Network)

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peercasting

  But seriously, I support this completely. I really hope somebody can make this happen.

• Chris Rawlinson said: On 08/02/2007 at 6:05 pm

  Hi there buddy,

  Will see what we can do for the next one. Dave and I have always been keen to book a venue in CT that had wireless, but so far no luck. If anyone out there would like to sponsor it for the evening then please get in contact with us. I will see what i can do for the next CT 27 dinner and have a look around, we just have to try and find places that can accommodate us and won’t charge us a fortune. Great idea though and am trying to get the Stormhoek Couture Sunday sessions broadcast live too but that’s another story
  cheers mate,
  Chris

• Dave said: On 08/03/2007 at 4:05 pm

  I’m superkeen for this Stii! Especially since we’re going international with 27dinners later this year.

• FeistyFemale said: On 08/04/2007 at 2:17 pm

  I think it’s a super idea - will see if I can help find you that sponsor

Spit it out!

Filed in: GeekDinner! by: Stii