[Coco] Glenside's new website was:Good News

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 3:56 PM, Frank Pittel <fwp at deepthought.com> wrote:
> Although I'm responding to Aaron's email this is directed to the entire list
> not just Aaron. I've also written, rewritten, deleted and started over again for
> the last couple of hours but I'm sure I'm going to ruffle feathers and get into trouble
> anyhow. :-) Like Aaron I am a member of Glenside and this mailing list I also am a member
> of the coco facebook group and may still have an account on coco3.com. Unlike Aaron and most
> here I live reasonably local to the core group and there fore am able to attend the monthly meetings
> in person.
>

Thanks for writing.  I know several of us distant members wish we
could be more involved with glenside, but live too far away to attend
meetings.   Maybe we feel a little left out :)  It was great to attend
last month via Skype btw.

> For what it's worth our meetings are open to the public and we do what we're able
> to make it possible for those that can't join us in person join via skype. Our resources in that
> avenue is limited however. We meet at a public library and although wifi is available the bandwidth
> is limited. If anyone reading this knows how to make our meeting more available via skype we're all
> ears!!
>

I would recommend uStream, or something like it.  There may be better
services. but that is how I streamed the live cam from the fest last
year to 20+ viewers despite the limited bandwidth at the hotel.

Basically you run the client (available for pc/webcam or smartphones,
etc) instead of Skype and it sends a single stream to the uStream
server.  Any number of viewers can then watch your stream from their
server, using bandwidth between themselves and uStream but not using
any (more) of your bandwidth.

Unlike Skype, the remote party cannot talk back.  However, there is a
built in chat room where they can comment in real time.  For meetings
it might be best not to have 2 way channels anyway.  If you had
someone monitor the chat room during the meeting, you could allow
questions from remote folks, etc.

There are several benefits to such a system, a major one is that you
don't have to do anything to support a new viewer, there is no need to
exchange usernames and set up/troubleshoot/manage a dedicated
connection for each person.  You stream the meeting to uStream, and
you're done.

> I have to be careful in what I'm going to write here because although I'm a "local member" I'm not
> an officer of the club and in no way speak for it. Please everyone take what I'm writing here in that
> vein. I agree that we have a problem with communication to members outside of our "core" group of about
> 8 members. I have to admit I don't see a lot of traffic on the coco group on facebook but have posted a
> short reminder of the fest there. I hope it generates some interest and traffic. I don't know how to
> access the coco IRC group so I can't mention the fest there. One very easy way for people interested in
> helping get the word out about the fest is to help get the word about the fest out. :-) If you're
> involved in a coco IRC mention the fest there. I spent time on the old coco3 forum/group/whatever it
> was called talking up the fest in recent years but although people were interest in seeing a video feed
> of the fest there wasn't much interest from the people there in attending. I understand that for the
> people there going to the fest means a lot of time and money spent traveling. In the end I stopped do
> to the perceived lack of interest.

The coco IRC channel is #coco_chat on freenode.  If you don't use an
IRC client regularly, the easiest way to join is via a web browser:
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=coco_chat

I will personally make sure cocofest is announced and any news is
presented in the channel.

>
> If anyone knows of an avenue to help promote the fest feel free to mention the fest.
>

There are some retro computing web forums where an announcement would
be appropriate.  I'll post to the one I am a member of...  I guess we
don't want a flood of people posting the same thing but it would be
good to have the news out there (once) on every relevant forum.

> The Other Frank
>
> On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 01:33:26PM -0500, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 12:49 PM, Richard E. Crislip
>> <rcrislip at neo.rr.com> wrote:
>> (snip)
>> >
>> > Ahhhem... The announcement is on the Web site. That's what prompted me to make
>> > the hotel reservation last night. So I am at a loss of what  is being
>> > discussed here other than the proposed update to the site home page.
>> >
>>
>> Please don't take this the wrong way, but the group of people who
>> would potentially attend the CoCoFest and the group of people who
>> check the Glenside page of their own accord (or are even aware that
>> the page exists) are not by any means equal.
>>
>> There has been a resurgence of interest in the CoCo and "retro
>> computing" in general in the last couple years.  There is an active
>> and growing facebook group, we get new people popping into the
>> coco_chat channel on IRC regularly, and we've had several new folks
>> join us on this list recently too.
>>
>> It would be a real shame if these folks don't even know that our
>> community has a great annual event.  Posting an announcement on an
>> obscure website simply isn't serving the community well.  Limiting
>> notification to people who already know the event exists (and think to
>> check on their own for details) is a good way to ensure the event will
>> not gain new attendees and will probably lose past attendees who would
>> have come but simply forgot or didn't hear about it until too late.
>>
>> I am not one to complain without offering to help solve an issue.  Is
>> there some mechanism for volunteering to help?  Any official stance on
>> how or where the event can/should be publicized?  Some transparency in
>> the event planning would certainly be nice.. I realize it's a
>> "Glenside thing" but it's so important to the community that maybe
>> some sharing of information and responsibility would be appropriate.
>>
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>
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