On 20 Oct 2009, at 14:25, Thomas Dalton wrote:
2009/10/20 Michael Peel email@mikepeel.net:
That technical limitation. :-) Also, there are concerns about the required connection speed for hosting a multi-way conference like this (as I understand it, the calls are all routed through the host computer), and also the quality of the connections (I believe this degrades as more people are added in?). Additionally, in order to join in a conference call, they would need to skype call the person hosting the meeting, who would then have to put the conference on mute to answer the call and conference them in. That can really slow down the conference.
IRC meetings have gone perfectly smoothly when no-one has remembered to moderate the channel, so I expect voluntary muting would work. The call would need to be hosted by someone with a good internet connection, that is true. People could ask to be added through skype chat, there is no need for a voice call.
That wasn't no-one remembering; as there hasn't been a problem so far, I was choosing not to +m the channel, as it makes things easier if someone loses voice, or we want to ask someone to speak. You're correct in saying that voluntary moderation would probably work. From my experience hosting skype conferences before, a separate call needs to be established, and then that merged into the conference - there's no way to have someone join a conference directly - although that may have changed in the last year or so.
These may not be problems - in which case we can relax that restriction in the future - but for the first attempt, it's logical to keep things as simple as possible. The aim here is definitely not to exclude people, or become any less transparent, it's to become more effective as a board.
It is worth a try. It will be interesting to see how well it works - there may be problems with people talking over each other. Will a recording of the meeting be made public? I would also ask that more detailed minutes be produced, since there would be searchable IRC logs to get the detail from.
I'm not aware of a way to record a Skype conference without requiring an external device (i.e. recording the signal to the speaker, rather than digitally within the computer); if anyone knows a way to do this, then the meetings should definitely be recorded. It remains to be seen what the reduction in information in the IRC logs will be - the signal to noise should greatly increase, which may offset the reduction in time that the logs go on for.
Mike