#18

Yes, Zoom does have that limitation. Google has the limitation of needing to admit people manually in a way that’s not obvious if they haven’t been pre-invited using a Gmail address. Microsoft has the limitation of needing to install its very heavy and clunky collaboration interface. Discord has a limitation of I think up to 9 participants if a screen is shared. Thanks for your conscientiousness but I think we can forget @xnhp your great initial suggestion of bigbluebutton (BBB) for now; its openness and own-server control really fits our values but I think my later mention of having done a Test on it was misunderstood; I was trying to convey that it — like Discord Voice — also doesn’t work for users in countries like mine. Sorry if any confusion caused.

Here is a list of countries whose Obsidianthropes w©ould be excluded by strictly standardizing on Discord voice (or anything which uses the usual VOIP ports): In which countries is Skype or WhatsApp calling blocked? - Quora.

Lamentably, in the current state of international cyberwarfare, there will always be someone left out, because there’s no cookie-cutter govt tech policy worldwide. I think it’s just my tiny country, with a small population that allowed just Zoom, Meet, Teams post-pandemic for kids to attend online schools and remoters to work virtually. Others only allow homegrown-apps or ones not originated in the U.S. We need to cede that it’s idealistic, if not impossible, for us now to fixate on one that everyone can access. We haven’t even begun talking about Timezone differences.

Maybe we can do what I’ve seen mods do in the e-ink Discord server I’m in… something that’s pragmatic and balanced — for now — set Discord as a default… it’s the easiest and least obtuse/extra steps for those active in our community (it’ll help keep people involved and engaged in our server) BUT allow exceptions under the condition that the organizing host or slated speaker has a known and recognized technical disability preventing them from Discord or scheduling the call at the usual timeslot. And if someone from a VOIP-blocked country REALLY wants to participate in someone else’s Discord speech event as a guest, there are workarounds they can do (e.g. stay up late on a red eye and use a VPN, which may be illegal in their locales, but many choose to do it nonetheless, I don’t). Then when we max out on our Discord voice connections and have a routine of weekly events and have to think about paying, it might make the most sense all-around to crowd-fund a Zoom Pro account, I think people would by then feel a lot of learning-value coming back to them from this community as aspiring context-miners to each contribute a monthly cup of coffee, or there might be 1 Zoom Pro user in our community already among them who wouldn’t mind being a benefactor and hosting our calls.

Anyway, I’ve asked a Q now in the General chan on Discord, @Licat is on the pulse, let’s see what comes out there.

P.S. @xnhp my topic (which should be clearly distinctly classified separate from a Talk — it’s a Hackathon— e.g 10 minutes to explain the big “rock”/sticky-problem and the rest we all together swarm on suggesting solutions and co-tinkering in the remaining hour to crack it) really could be any one of a holy grail I’m after in this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/textdatamining/comments/mdr5wv/documenting_a_typical_series_of_text_analytics/. I was thinking of starting with how to auto-change concept titles to Headers in a note and use Refactoring to split it up then visualize with the Graph3D using the Neo4j plugin. But IDK if I’ll do anything right now until there’s clarity about my technical ability to participate, which I’m okay with if not (I’ll take a bullet for the group!)

#19

Awesome, thanks for your research.

Let’s stick to discord then for a start.

I’ll be afk until tomorrow night. If someone (@SkepticMystic?) wants to set up a offer/request form and announce it in discord/forum, feel free to go ahead. As I said, I already have 2 topics I could talk about.

#20

I have done some more work on the forms, keen to hear what you think!

  • I split the offer/request into 2 forms.
  • Made the description more… descriptive
  • Added various options for technical requirements, moderator, expected duration.
  • EDIT: Also added the option to choose a meeting platform that works best for the presenter (with a description saying Discord is ideal)

The results of the Google Form can easily (and continuously) be sent to a Google spreadsheet, so it’ll be in a more workable format.

The forms are a bit longer now, so a screenshot won’t cut it :yum:

Here is the link to the “Offer to give a talk” form: https://forms.gle/nNMgcJYH8LanuBQFA

And the “Request a talk” form: https://forms.gle/EPGTSchoxseTvog49

1 Like
#21

I’m not the best at creative/descriptive writing, so if I were to send the invite on Discord, I would prefer someone to read over it first :sweat_smile: but sure, I can give it a try

#22

No problem, ill look at it tomorrow :slight_smile:

1 Like
#23

I’m happy with what we’ve achieved here and what’s to come.

I’m going to fill out the form and submit anyway!

IDK if Discord Voice allows Recording of sessions (or we could use some other tool that gamers use to stream)… it would let blocked folks like me at least later watch all those great happenings I’m going to miss live, and they could become a trove of video content that’s a basis for future Obsidian tutorials, help pages, or classes. Just note that legally one has to inform attendees beforehand that the session is recorded and how public it would be.

3 Likes
#24

So, is everyone happy to announce this thing then? :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

@xnhp have you have a chance to read the form?

I haven’t written an announcement yet, I could start that now.

I messaged Licat asking his opinions on this, but he hasn’t replied just yet

#25

Sorry all, I’ve been a bit busy, I’ll follow up as soon as possible.

I saw you already posted on discord. Thanks a lot!

@SkepticMystic Can you share the Spreadsheet that contains the form submissions?

#26

Here are the two spreadsheets:

#27

Thanks @SkepticMystic! :slight_smile: Just looked again at the forms and they look great as well.

I saw you’ve already been advertising our little endeavour on discord; thanks a lot for that.

Did you already post on #general as well? If not, I’d probably do that aswell in a few day’s time.

I made some submissions, requests as well as offerings.

Some feedback on the forms:

  • When filling out the forms I wished there had been an (optional) field where I can describe my talk/hands-on in free-form text in a bit more detail.
  • It might be useful to also add an (optional) name field to the request form so we are able to follow-up with the requester.

I suggest we wait 1-2 days in case a few more submissions trickle in. Then, if we have more than a couple, we can start a voting; or if there’s only a few we simply pick one and schedule a date.

Cheers,
Ben

3 Likes
#28

Thanks xnhp!

I’ll post it on #general in a couple days :slight_smile:

Thank you for the feedback! Regarding the first point, there is kind of already a way to give a more free-form input for the format question (in the “Other…” section):

image

For point two, I’ll definitely add a name section to allow following-up :slight_smile:

#29

Oh, I was talking about an input field to further specify the topic. For instance:

  • Topic: “Flobbling Flubbs for optimal rebobble”
  • Additional Info: “The purpose of this talk is to introduce people from outside the field to the problem of flubb-flobbling. Of particular practical relevance is the rebobble measure, first defined by Henserich in 1857.”

Thanks a lot for the effort!

#30

Ahh gotcha! I’ll add that now

#31

What do you all think is the best way to vote on a topic?
I tried to see if an reddit-style upvote system could be implemented in Google Sheets, but this seems difficult/not-doable.
We could select a few topics from the spreadsheet, and make a straw poll to see which topic is chosen for the next talk?

#32

I suggest we make a forum thread and people vote with hearts. Wouldd have the advantage of extra visibility, ability to add more details, and a strawpoll link would have to be shared somewhere anyway.

2 Likes
#33

Awesome, I’m down with that. Do you think we should just have one Obsidian Talks voting thread where we can have a new vote each week (possibly delete old posts to reduce clutter). Or we could made a new post for each vote

#34

Another option would be to do it with polls!

image
image694×249 14.9 KB

We could add one per talk:

My awesome talk
  • I’m interested

0 voters

Seems we can also add dates (not sure if it’s possible to use them to filter or something):

2021-03-30T16:00:00Z

Edit: Testing what happens to poll results if I edit my post

1 Like
#35

Sweet, that looks pretty good. The nice thing about the date embedding is that it can display different timezones.

#36

:exploding_head: :exploding_head: :exploding_head:

This is perfect!!! Someone just needs to setup the voting post, and we can start adding different talks there.

In a way, this could replace the “Offer to give a talk” form. Users could just set up a poll there? This reduces the number of steps, but sort of separates the different ways of doing things… thoughts?
Perhaps both are fine? We could also make the voting post only editable by organisers, but that feels wrong too :joy:

1 Like
#37

I’m gonna set something up tomorrow if everyone is fine with that? I’ll add the existing submissions to a new voting post