Have you considered IRC? It is free, it is very familiar to most wikimedians, channels can be actively managed to allow only invited and digitally identified participants (including the possibility of wikimedia.ca cloaks given out only by Wiki Canada Inc), allows moderated or open discussion meeting formats, and is readily loggable (which means less work for a secretary.) Most users have an IRC client, or there are a range of web-based gateways which allows almost any user who has internet access to be involved. Of particular benefit is the ability to use URLs to link discussions to relevant internet resources.

As it is a purely text interface it does not allow as rich a communication stream, but at the exact same time this improve decision-making speed by reducing digression tendencies.

IRC is extremely scalable as it is a very low bandwidth protocol. With Skype and similar voice meeting software, unmoderated discussions will be punctuated with periods of dropped sound when multiple people try to speak at once - this is an artifact of the high bandwidth use and will unequally harm users who have lower bandwidth connections. IRC can be too fast when many people are typing rapidly; screens can scroll too rapidly to be fully read and understood.

Amgine

On Sat, 2 Apr 2011 16:31:21 -0700 (PDT) Doc James jmh649@gmail.com wrote:

Hey All

Currently we have been using skype for voice meetings. It however is somewhat limited in it abilities to handle conferencing between many people. As the organization grows we may need to look at other options.

WebEx was suggested here http://wikimedia.ca/wiki/Wikimedia_Canada:Discussions_in_English#Online_meet... While it does have some cost we may be able to apply for funding to cover it from Wikimedia Inc. Alan Walker has been working on a possible grant application http://wikimedia.ca/wiki/Budget/2011

Are there any other suggestions on how best we can run meetings / AGMs so everyone can be easily involved?

James Heilman (Doc James)