Video conferencing and collaboration

[JoeTomasone]

Looked like the RAM requirements were a tad beefy for a slicehost.   How much RAM was on your virtual machine?

BigBlueButton looks pretty cool, and from what I'm gathering from a conversation in the demo, runs nicely on Slicehost. I think I might set up a VPS to play with it on. If I do, I'll be sure to invite some CAPTalkers on to play too!

OK, so Big Blue Button is really, really, really cool. I set it up in an Ubuntu Server 10.04 virtual machine on my desktop computer, and as someone with only a small amount of Linux experience, it was dead-simple to set up. There's some really cool features such as webcam, voice, call-in with FreeSWITCH or Asterisk (I haven't gotten into this as I don't have the phone infrastructure to support it), breakout sessions (you have to enable it in the config though), desktop sharing, whiteboard, etc. A tech-savvy member could run small meetings on this platform from their home computer very easily if they have a decent internet connection. For larger meetings or if you don't have anyone meeting the bandwidth requirements you could get a Linode or Slicehost VPS, or you could try Amazon EC2, which is priced by the hour so you aren't paying monthly for a server you're only using 2 hours a month.

[Spaceman3750]

Looked like the RAM requirements were a tad beefy for a slicehost.   How much RAM was on your virtual machine?

BigBlueButton looks pretty cool, and from what I'm gathering from a conversation in the demo, runs nicely on Slicehost. I think I might set up a VPS to play with it on. If I do, I'll be sure to invite some CAPTalkers on to play too!

OK, so Big Blue Button is really, really, really cool. I set it up in an Ubuntu Server 10.04 virtual machine on my desktop computer, and as someone with only a small amount of Linux experience, it was dead-simple to set up. There's some really cool features such as webcam, voice, call-in with FreeSWITCH or Asterisk (I haven't gotten into this as I don't have the phone infrastructure to support it), breakout sessions (you have to enable it in the config though), desktop sharing, whiteboard, etc. A tech-savvy member could run small meetings on this platform from their home computer very easily if they have a decent internet connection. For larger meetings or if you don't have anyone meeting the bandwidth requirements you could get a Linode or Slicehost VPS, or you could try Amazon EC2, which is priced by the hour so you aren't paying monthly for a server you're only using 2 hours a month.

Originally, 768 and it ran fine with a handful of connections. I upped it to an even 1000MB after I started getting close to maxing out my RAM. They recommend 2GB, I haven't been able to stress test it yet. You're right, Slicehost would get a tad expensive. Amazon EC2 might help defray that cost since you pay by the hour, you have a snapshot ready to go that you load up when you need to have a meeting and pull down when you're done. It's a bit more work, but it's the cheapest way to go short of running it in a VM like I am.

EDIT: I do not, in fact, have 1TB of RAM.