http://www.terrywassall.co.uk/terry/2008/04/14/dimdim-web-conferencin

Thanks to my Twitter friends and FOATF I have discovered DimDim. These are a few notes on my first experiment. DimDim is a (still beta) free web conferencing system that can be used by signing up for the hosted service or the OS code can be downloaded and installed locally. To host a meeting the host’s computer needs a small browser plugin installed but attendees do not need this. Everyone needs the Flash plugin, version 9 or above.

Once you have registered with DimDim any number of meetings can be scheduled in advance or one can be started immediately on an ad hoc basis. Invitations are sent out by email. The email provides a link to the meeting and details of the agenda, scheduled time and so on. However, the email does not provide logging in details and any one who obtains the link to the meeting would be able to attend. When an invited attendee clicks on the link it takes them to a joining page that has already filled in their email and the name of the meeting. They just need to enter a screen name to enter. Any email address can be entered here so the meeting url can be sent to any one or made into a link on a web page or in a blog post.

Before letting you in DimDIm does a check of your browser and version of Flash. If it not 9 or above you can install at this point.

Once in there you can see a list of attendees. The main area can be used for viewing the host’s desktop and any applications being run, a Powerpoint or PDF file, or a Whiteboard. This is controlled by the host. There is an option to chat with all - opens chat area - or initiate private chats with any of the attendees. Chat and audio can be disabled for individuals by the host.

If the full screen option is chosen this makes the maximum space available for viewing an application or presentation but some scrolling is required by the viewer to see the whole of the application window unless the host has sized and positioned it on their desktop to fit what area the viewer can see. In effect this puts some contol of the scrolling that is necessary in the hands of the host. If the viewer needs to scroll this can be guided by the host via audio or text communication. The system provides audio and video communication. To share an application the host has to minimse the DimDim meeting window so is not able to see what viewers can see. Control of applications or slides cannot be handed to viewers but they can collaboratively use the whiteboard and annotate slides. Switching between these desktop, slides and the whitebaord is a single click. The screen refresh on viewers’ screens is not bad but there is an inevitable lag.

It looks like a maximum of 20 attendees are possible and only 3 of these can share the microphone (i.e. use the audio channel).

I have tried DimDim this by running my PC as host and a laptop logged in as an attendee. I couldn’t use sound as the feedback nearly brought the plaster of the ceiling!

One possible use of this is as an alternative to Skype meetings. Skype allows multiple users to talk, text and video but all participants need to be registered Skype users and have Skype installed on their PCs. With DimDIm only the meeting’s host PC needs an installed client. In addition there is the facility to share documents and applications.

I am thinking of testing it by running a session(s) for introducing LeedsBlogs, our Elgg installation, to new users to demonstrate the basics of posting, joining a community blog, uploading files, embedding files and images, what ‘friends’ are for, tagging, use of access levels, creating bespoke access lists and using them and so on. Or run LeedsBlogs help desks, or a master class, perhaps….

http://www.terrywassall.co.uk/terry/2008/04/19/the-worlds-a-twitter/

I overheard on the radio this morning, while scraping the toast, some mention of twitter and the fact that some person in Downing St. is twitting (tweeting?) regularly about what’s going on there. I made a mental note to look it up on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme listen again. Partly because I usually mislay mental notes and partly because my small group of twitter mates might be interested I posted a tweet (twit?) mentioning it. Within a short time someone posted a reply giving me the URL to the programme and how far to fast forward to find the relevant bit (14 mins 30 secs) and telling me that the Today programme  runs a twitter channel itself. Looking at this I see that most, perhaps all, BBC Regional news services have twitter channels too. A little later my original tweet got another reply with a link to the Downing St. twitter channel and to Bill Thompson who was being interviewed on the Today programme, from where I found the interviewer, Rory Cellan-Jones. This in turn led me to another tweet with links to a Guardian article about the Downing St. twitter-er.

I must say I find the twitter phenomenon fascinating. It is ripe for sociological analysis and I’m sure someone somewhere is already doing it. It exemplifies so many aspects of on-line social networking  - networks within networks, the power the ‘friends of a friend’ connections, the importance of reputation and status, the collective and collaborative evaluation and dissemination of information and resources, and much more. Who would have thought that a stream of short messages (max 14o characters), often about where people are, what they are eating, watching on TV, what mood they are in, what the weather is like where they are, that they are in a traffic jam eating chocolate, and so on could also be such a powerful research tool. And the seemingly trivial nature of many posts is not trivial at all in the context of groups of twitter-ers and the nature of their identities and relationships and the reality of their virtual community. I’m getting close to abandoning the notion of 'virtual' in these contexts. It just obscures more of the nature of these sorts of communities and their relations than it illuminates. The experience is real, the information is real, the people are real, their activities are real and, dare I say it, the feeling of attachment and even to some extent obligation are real. Or at least as real as in some networks and communities I am involved with off-line.

http://www.terrywassall.co.uk/terry/2008/04/26/online-conferences/

Over Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of this week I attended the Emerge online conference Digital Communities & Digital Identities. (Josie Fraser, who did a great job organising it, has posted on this in more detail). I  contributed as a presenter some time ago to a JISC Webinar on Web 2.0 applications for HE but this was the first full-on on-line conference I have attended and it worked very well. The sessions were run in Elluminate and all the features were used, breakout group sessions, whiteboard, slides, video etc. The audio quality was pretty good (once speakers got their levels right and everyone turned their speaker off in open mic sessions!).

I was surprised how useful the chat window was for sharing ideas, making comments and asking questions. There was some real brainstorming going on. It contributed significantly to the value of the presentations and is an aspect of on-line conference sessions that would be difficulty to replicate in a ‘real’ conference (unless everyone had a laptop and used a web service like Cover It Live - now there’s a thought). The chat really enhanced the sessions, made it easy for the presenter to see what was interesting the audience and helped give a focus to the audio and text discussion at the end and the summing up. It also was very sociable and entertaining! At times it was a bit like a group of naughty school kids chattering, swapping jokes, and winding up each other and the presenter. Personally I felt the sense of community grow throughout the 3 days and felt this made a significant contribution to ambience of the serious discussion too.

I felt pretty comfortable in the environment quite quickly once I got the hang of all the bells and whistles and there was quite a lot of spontaneous mutual support and advice as the community sorted itself out. One of the ‘old hands’ at this sort of thing remarked how better we had become operating in this sort of environment, not just the techical issues of knowing how the functions and tools work but how to make effective use of them in the presentations and the peripheral activities around them. I guess we will all be experts at this in a few years time, and hopefully our students will learn good and effective practice in these environments while they are with us.

I am attending the Next Generation Environments JISC conference next week as a member of a discussion panel but this is a normal face-to-face conference. Several people who were ‘at’ the Emerge on-line conference will be there and I am looking forward to comparing notes. I think on-line conferences will never replace f2f for many reasons but as additional and in-between events I think they are enormously valuable and effective. There can be more of them, they can be highly focussed (mini-conferences) with more targetted agendas, they are cheap (often free) and do not require travel and accommodation. And of course, the 2 modes can be merged when f2f conferences also run Elluminate (or another suitable system) and provide wikis, social networking and blogging. This opens up conferences to individuals who cannot other wise make it. And often the sessions can be recorded.

There is a growing understanding of the main differences and the main pros and cons of each conference mode. One disadvantage of the on-line mode is that I had to buy my own beer. On the otherhand I didn’t make a fool of myself at the disco. Actually the Emerge conference did have a very successful social event in Second Life with a DJ and fashion show. Sadly I couldn’t make it because I found my home PC was under spec for the new SL client and it wouldn’t install.