[technology taskforce] Summary of TTF call on August 12 2013 to test BlueJeans conferencing solution

[Dev Anand Teelucksingh]

The technology task force working group had a conference call on
Monday 12 August 2013 at 15:00 UTC to test the BlueJeans conferencing
solution.

TTF Persons on the call : Dev Anand Teelucksingh, Glenn Mcknight,
Yaovi Athooun, Gordon Chillcot, Bill Thanis
>From Staff: Gisella Gruber

Some of the notes/points from the meeting

- DAT, GM, YA and GG had webcams and connected with video and audio in
their browser.
 YA had problems with Firefox, but got it working in Internet Explorer
; but GC and BT had to use the audio only as they couldn't get video
working.
 GC mentioned no Linux support and there is no Android browser
support. (apparently the workaround for Android according to
http://bluejeans.com/mobile was to use third party apps like Skype,
Google chat)
- As persons talked, the focus switched automatically to the speaker
talking so others can see who is talking.
- No group text chat.
- No speaker's queue. No way to raise hands other than raising a hand
in camera or by speaking up for those on audio.
- There is no pod/window to show an agenda or to show a document,
presentation, etc, unless someone shares their desktop. GC shared his
screen (Windows desktop) and it worked although there was a lag,
indication that the persons sharing and being in the conference at the
same time would require a lot of bandwidth.
- Although the novelty of seeing each other was nice, there were audio
issues (mostly echo, and at times garbled audio). This implies that
there would be a lot of end user issue troubleshooting based on end
users' equipment and bandwidth.
- No way to record the call.
- Given the ability of BlueJeans to focus on the active speaker when
talking, using the Adigo bridge and disabling audio for the BlueJeans
connection would be
counter-intutive and would then require someone to manually put the
focus on a video speaker.
There would also be a lot of echo for persons on BlueJeans and the
Adigo bridge at the same time which would be disruptive, especially if
they join mid call.
- Having the Adigo bridge to carry out interpretation would be impractical.
- Moderators can mute audio and hide video of participants and
disconnect them from the call, if needed.
- While this may be good for a few persons wanting to see and talk to
each other, it would be difficult to see how this would scale with
more users, especially without a speakers queue. BlueJeans supports up
to 25 persons.

Meeting concluded at 15:42 UTC

- Not tested, but BlueJeans offers video sharing where a video could
be shown to participants for others to see. See
http://bluejeans.com/video-sharing

A BlueJeans representative called me directly after the call said text
chat and ability to record meetings are features to be implemented
possibly by year end.


Other TTF members on this call, do add (or correct!) any of the
observations noted.

Kind Regards,

Dev Anand Teelucksingh