We had a really amazing turn out to the Kubuntu Packaging Party, and we had lots of Fun !
We quickly realised that the number of people, had blown past the limits of some of the channels set up for folks to join the party. Despite a valiant effort by Ovidiu-Florin Bogdan and the KDE Sprint team in the Bus at CERN Labs who joined the Google+ Hangout via one device.
Aaron span up a Mumble server in double quick time, so that we could make room for additional guests. A mistake on my ( Rick Timmis ) part meant that the Hangout had not be configured as a Hangout on Air, and there was no live stream for folks to tune into. Again, Aaron Honeycutt rallied to the rescue, and quickly set up a live stream to YouTube, great job, Thanks Aaron.
There were many of you who could not get in and we were really sorry to disappoint you. It quickly became apparent that with all the different channels and technical challenges we were not going to be able to deliver the Packaging presentation, despite best efforts from Marius Gripsgard to spin up an lxd Linux Container for me to work with. The multimedia load on my laptop killed my ability to generate any sensible length GPG key.
However, ignoring the carry on, this first Kubuntu online party turned out to be a “Roaring Success” allow me to explain why.
As the party progressed, the topic of conversation moved from “Packaging and Partying”, to how we go about fixing our online arena. Clive suggested we take a look at Open Meetings from the apache foundation, and Marius was quickly on the case attempting to build an Open Meetings server in another lxd Linux Container. Also we looked up Big Blue Button at http://www.bigbluebutton.org where we discovered a demo server we could login to.
Off we all ran at double speed to get signed into the demo server. I think it would be only fair to say that we were most impressed with what we found. Multiple stream webcam video chat, shared presentation board, IRC chat channel, and well feature shared whiteboard, with drawing tools etc.
After around 45 minutes of having a jolly old time, playing with all these features, we were suddenly joined in our room by Fred Dixon, the product manager of Big Blue Button. Perhaps a little surprised to see the Kubuntu community “Squatting” in his demo server.
Feeling rather naughty, and spluttering apologies I quickly attempted to explain who we are, and what we were doing there. To our astonishment, surprise, and utter good fortune. Fred explained that he was delighted that the Kubuntu community were having such a good time, and finding Big Blue Button so useful. Gracious, generous, and without a flinch; Fred said “Why don’t I set you up with your own Kubuntu Big Blue Button instance on our servers. You can then use your own rooms for what ever you want ?”
We were flabbergasted, over joyed and very excited.
So Kubuntu friends and our community now have their own fully featured meeting, presentation, video and voice conference server courtesy of Fred Dixon and the wonderful team at http://www.bigbluebutton.org
Thanks BBB team.
Without further deliberation, I shall bid you all good day as I set off to organise “Kubuntu Packaging Party 2”
Watch this space, the mailing list and the Kubuntu Podcast Google+ Events page for dates
See you there