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Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: JoeyD on March 11, 2016, 08:12:13 pm

Title: Online meetups, webinars and other gigs.
Post by: JoeyD on March 11, 2016, 08:12:13 pm
So the reason I've helped with the mumble-server, is that I believe it fills a gap in communication in the crypto sphere and bitshares especially.

We have mumble for hangouts with virtually no restriction in number of attendees and very low bandwidth requirements for each individual. Couple of advantages it has compared to google-hangouts and youtube is that it's still accessible from China. We had high hopes that it would enable hundreds of people to hold meetups and who knows we might get there yet.

I've been looking for ways to add to the experience and one thing I feel is missing from mumble is a way to do presentations or webinars. I've looked around and I've found two possible solutions. First one a google-hangout style audio-videoconferencing server, with screen/tab sharing. Second option a BigBlueButton-server, which is tailor made for doing online classes, presentations and such.

They won't be able to replace mumble I think, because of the increased bandwidth required and far lower number of simultaneous users. Then again, a webinar probably won't work with an overly large number of participants. I personally like BigBlueButton (https://demo.bigbluebutton.org/) the most, but I'd like some input from the community which they feel is more useful.

The first option is light enough on the server requirements that I might be able to add it to the current mumble-server. The BigBlueButton server has some beefy system requirements and would most likely require us to move to a different server and probably a higher monthly bill.

So my question is two fold, which option do you think is the preferable or most useful? In case enough people like the BigBlueButton-server, does anybody have a recommendation for an affordable high bandwidth server with a minimum of 4 cores, 4Gigs of ram, a lot of storage space for recordings and high enough data-limit to allow for videostreaming.
Title: Re: Online meetups, webinars and other gigs.
Post by: Thom on March 12, 2016, 12:12:48 am
I have no idea what kind of budget you're currently working with, and this was my first search attempt. Compared with low end VPS this seems dirt cheap to me. I also like to checkout the Web Hosting Talk forum (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1) for useful tips, promos and reviews.

https://www.namecheap.com/hosting/dedicated-servers.aspx (https://www.namecheap.com/hosting/dedicated-servers.aspx)

Lowest cost for a quad core, 8GB RAM, 500GB dedicated server is $58 / month. I use this company for domain names, find them easy to work with plus they accept crypto as payment (Bitcoin).

The link provides all the specs. The lowend uses 2 x 100Mbps connections. Traditional hardware (UDIMM RAM, standard rotational disks).
Title: Re: Online meetups, webinars and other gigs.
Post by: fuzzy on March 13, 2016, 08:02:11 pm
I have heard that digital ocean is the best for the money joey, but not sure if this is true.  What I heard, though, was that they are about as good with respect to quality, but about 50% cheaper (or more) than Google and AWS.
Title: Re: Online meetups, webinars and other gigs.
Post by: fuzzy on March 13, 2016, 08:07:49 pm
Quote from: Thom on March 12, 2016, 12:12:48 am
I have no idea what kind of budget you're currently working with, and this was my first search attempt. Compared with low end VPS this seems dirt cheap to me. I also like to checkout the Web Hosting Talk forum (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1) for useful tips, promos and reviews.

https://www.namecheap.com/hosting/dedicated-servers.aspx (https://www.namecheap.com/hosting/dedicated-servers.aspx)

Lowest cost for a quad core, 8GB RAM, 500GB dedicated server is $58 / month. I use this company for domain names, find them easy to work with plus they accept crypto as payment (Bitcoin).

The link provides all the specs. The lowend uses 2 x 100Mbps connections. Traditional hardware (UDIMM RAM, standard rotational disks).

#sharebits Thom 5 COPPERTICKET - I greatly appreciate you always helping out Thom.  :) 

we all work together to help bitshares along and every single second someone uses to help improve what we have going for us is just more value added to the end product. :)
Title: Re: Online meetups, webinars and other gigs.
Post by: btstip on March 13, 2016, 08:09:19 pm
Hey fuzzy, here are the results of your tips...
Curious about ShareBits? Visit us at http://sharebits.io and start tipping BTS on https://bitsharestalk.org/ today!
Source: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21887.msg285465/topicseen.html#msg285465
Created by hybridd (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=40140)
Title: Re: Online meetups, webinars and other gigs.
Post by: Thom on March 14, 2016, 03:20:40 pm
Quote from: fuzzy on March 13, 2016, 08:02:11 pm
I have heard that digital ocean is the best for the money joey, but not sure if this is true.  What I heard, though, was that they are about as good with respect to quality, but about 50% cheaper (or more) than Google and AWS.

Thanks fuzzy, much appreciated.

I have no experience with AWS or GWS, but I do with DO. BitHost is a DO reseller that accepts crypto. Excellent service. DO is fantastic infrastructure, however I can tell you that you pay for it. Given the fact our mumble / BBB services don't require 24x7 uptime / reliability like witness nodes do I think it is worth checking into less expensive solutions. Going with a dedicated server platform IMO puts you in a whole other category of hosting company responsiveness also (for the better, as compared to shared hosting or VPS).
Title: Re: Online meetups, webinars and other gigs.
Post by: JoeyD on March 14, 2016, 06:42:13 pm
Thanks for the tips Thom and Fuzzy.

Ideally I'd like a service where you pay for what you use and which could be scaled if need be.

I could upgrade our current server to 4 cores and 2 Tb extra storage, which would probably be enough for now which would run us around 48/50 euros per month.

BigBlueButton is apparently close to the opensource moodle-education platform. Which might also be a route we could take. Maybe we could figure out a way to make this education-platform pay for itself, or even better allow people/educators/presenters to get payed themselves. The way I saw beyondbitcoin was a way to educate/help people, not just in faster communication. Maybe offering a moodle-setup we could try to provide that service to the crypto sphere. Kinda like an online crypto-university.

One thing fuzzy asked is to try and figure out how we could monetize our services, so we could not only pay for the server(s), but also the people and presenters. So I figured we might do something comparable to live-gigs for bands and sell tickets. Maybe add a crowd-source option where if a certain total of revenue/donations/add-income-whatever has been met, the session gets uploaded to the public (with the performers consent of course). Like I said, I'd prefer it if this was a way for presenters/educators to get some income, while still not excluding people.

Moodle offers a free moodle-server (with BBB) limited to 50 people with add-banners, or an add-free version for 5$ (might be Aussie-dollars) a month. Maybe we could try that first to see if it's the way we want to go. No idea if this would allow us to customize it to our requirements as in graphics and our own adds.
Title: Re: Online meetups, webinars and other gigs.
Post by: emailtooaj on March 20, 2016, 03:50:02 pm
Hello everyone,  has anyone heard or looked into http://mconf.org/    ????
They're a 3rd party software to BBB.  I glanced through their website and seems to be an active project. The big question is if they've been able to optimize BBB bandwidth, or at least  a work around to lighten the load? 
They also have a mobile app to plug into the meeting/conference... not sure if BBB had that or not.
Might be worth it to check into these guys.   I'm going to download a demo later to check it out.
Title: Re: Online meetups, webinars and other gigs.
Post by: Thom on March 20, 2016, 05:38:31 pm
I took a brief look, thx for the info AJ.

This could be exactly what we need. I don't know if their servers are available and robust enough to host many public groups, but if so we don't even have hosting costs to deal with.

It's certainly an option worth checking out. Looking forward to your evaluation @emailtooaj  and yours too @xeroc. If you guys find it suitable we need to publicize it (and perhaps integrate it with) basecamp (https://3.basecamp.com/3308528/projects/587622).
Title: Re: Online meetups, webinars and other gigs.
Post by: JonnyB on March 20, 2016, 05:51:00 pm
Me an @noisy are doing a google hangout on air most Sundays at 16:00 UTC
PM me your gmail if you wan to join in next week.

heres todays one: https://youtu.be/yJm41m4eRak (https://youtu.be/yJm41m4eRak)
Title: Re: Online meetups, webinars and other gigs.
Post by: Thom on March 20, 2016, 07:11:45 pm
Quote from: JonnyBitcoin on March 20, 2016, 05:51:00 pm
Me an @noisy are doing a google hangout on air most Sundays at 16:00 UTC
PM me your gmail if you wan to join in next week.

heres todays one: https://youtu.be/yJm41m4eRak (https://youtu.be/yJm41m4eRak)

Kewl. Perhaps you could checkout the mconf server demo AJ mentioned too.