Support for Remote/Online Conferences

[cycomachead]

I'm submitting a ..

• [ ] Bug Report
• [X] Feature Request

Expected behavior: This is more of an idea post, than a specific feature request...

So, since many of our short- to medium-term events are going to be moved online, I was wondering if there were any thoughts around specific features or adaptions that would make OSEM more broadly useful in this context?

A type of thing I'm thinking of: Can I use "rooms" to refer to video calls, such as Hangouts Meet or Zoom URLs? I think this might work, though I might want to adapt the model. Would it make more sense to just add a new field to each event?

But mostly, I'm starting this issue to hear from others. What are you thinking about for online conferences? Is there something that can be built that will help? :)

[nischay-dhiman]

@cycomachead

For Online Conferencing, three approaches come to my mind:

1. Referring to your solution with Zoom
   • I found that zoom can be integrated with ruby using its API's
   • Link to introduction
   • I also found a gem for zoom integration zoomus, but not sure about it as it uses Zoom API v1.
   • You can check out the pricing for education purposes as well.
2. Youtube APIs can also be used for LIVE Streaming
   • If only live streaming is required, as I doubt if they provide any chatting functionality etc.
   • Link : https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/live/getting-started
3. Last but not least: AWS Live Streaming
   • Not sure if any Ruby Gem Available for integration.
   • https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/live-streaming-on-aws/

According to me, I think zoom API's can be integrated and would solve logical issues for conference calls.

Let me know if that helps. I can pick up this task if the team wants me to.

[cycomachead]

Sorry for the delay in this!

Here's what I am thinking about as we plan for an event next month...

My general idea is less that I need OSEM to be the event distribution platform, though longer-term that's certainly an appealing proposal, though it seems like more work that I am imagining.

• Venue's don't make sense, probably but "Rooms" are still a useful scheduling mechanism.
• Should a room have a URL associated with it?
• Each event will be some video call or stream, in our case, a Zoom call. Does it make sense to do this via a Zoom meeting attached to a room, or a have a field per-event that users can access.
• Right now, the schedule is public or not, would it make sense to require login to view some components of our schedule? For example, if we distribute the link to join live only to paying attendees.

[cycomachead]

I decided to implement a feature where each room has a URL. This URL is shown in the conference schedule, but only to users who have a registration for the conference. https://github.com/snap-cloud/snapcon/commit/7d2135f8519e93dd2ed26eb32d7a2b5d81877757

[PenguinzPlays]

Something like bigbluebutton integration could solve this too.. \

[bennettscience]

I'm starting to prep for an internal conference in March. The URL added to each room is super nice because we're going to have a mix of pre-recorded YouTube Premiere streams and live Google Meet sessions. This will make getting people to the right Meet room much, much easier.

[AndrewKvalheim]

Related: #70