<adisbladis>
Discord has such a bad track record me and I guess many others with me consider it a complete deal breaker
<adisbladis>
My 2¢: As a FOSS community we should embrace those values, Discord is very much opposite to those.
<qyliss>
I appreciate the work of the NixCon organising team, and understand that this isn't a situation any of us wanted, but I do think this decision will have a not-insignificant impact on attendance and hope that has been given due weight in the decision making process.
<edef>
mumble sounds like a very reasonable choice
puck has joined #nixcon
<zimbatm>
does mumble have chat support as well?
<qyliss>
Wouldn't this be the place for chat, as with previous NixCons?
<edef>
if discord is the new chat platform that deserves announcing, i think
<lassulus>
mumble does have a chat but it's not very cool
<zimbatm>
qyliss: the big difference is that most of the interactions will happen online, so we have to account for that
<qyliss>
what does that mean?
<zimbatm>
one of the nice things about conferences is the ability to easily break out into groups that want to discuss a specific topic
<zimbatm>
with a single channel, the chat volume is going to be unmanageable
<edef>
mm
<qyliss>
We can have more than one channel here?
<qyliss>
#nixcon-$topic
<zimbatm>
how practical is it to discover which exist and who is currently participating in which?
<qyliss>
Presumably there'll be a website listing talks in advance -- there could be a channel for each of those created in advance and listen on the talk schedule, which I think would cover most breakouts that might happen.
<qyliss>
Breakout channels could also be listed in the channel topic
<qyliss>
It's also possible (at least in my IRC client) to do '//list -re ^nixos-*', which gives me channel names, descriptions, and nick counts, but I don't know if that's widely supported.
<qyliss>
/list, rather
<qyliss>
But the simplest option would probably be to have a shared pad and tell people to add channels to it as they're created, which I think would work fine.
<samueldr>
there is the alis service on freenode that can be queried with patterns
<zimbatm>
how do you integrate this with voice and screen sharing
<samueldr>
I know that some vocal contributors have been championing discord, but I also think that it will create a rift and cause a not-insignificant segment of the community not to participate at all
<qyliss>
I'd suggest to people that if they want voice and screen sharing, the create a Jitsi call etc and then post the link in the channel topic
<qyliss>
That wouldn't work for scheduled talks due to size, but I'd assume those would be being streamed to YouTube/etc anyway.
<zimbatm>
what I propose is that you put together a comprehensive plan of how it would work, and come join us next Monday. Otherwise, we will use Discord and you will have to deal with it.
<nbathum>
I can see Jitsi working for breakout / topic channels, but it requires hosting the server
<zimbatm>
our timeline is really short and we need a credible solution for next week
<nbathum>
2020.nixcon.org site is building on travis (no real content at this time yet)
<qyliss>
nbathum: not necessarily
<qyliss>
(re jitsi)
<qyliss>
zimbatm: when is NixCon planned to happen?
<qyliss>
and what does joining you next Monday entail?
<nbathum>
October 16-18th unless there are strong reasons to move it further in the year
<nbathum>
which... I mean "splitting the community" on technology choice could be at the level
<nbathum>
qyliss: I see some things like meet.jit.si is that the kind of thing you are referencing?
<qyliss>
Yeah
<qyliss>
fwiw, I'm not trying to say "I don't think you should use Discord because I personally don't like it". I think a significant chunk of the community will decide not to participate because of it, whether I decide to "deal with it" or not.
<nbathum>
I hear you
<nbathum>
to me it is a question of "do we want to have the conference" by our principles or in practice. there are definitely trade offs either way
<qyliss>
Well, I'm not sure it has really been demonstrated that we can't have the conference in practice if we don't use Discord
<nbathum>
sure, but it is a question of the timeline and our unknowns
<qyliss>
Yeah, absolutely.
<nbathum>
we know we could hold it next week if we wanted, using many non-free softwares
<qyliss>
I've been following the organisation efforts of the Linux Plumbers Conference recently.
<nbathum>
so since we want to hold it, and we want to use free softwares, we just need to have a solid plan
<nbathum>
how are they progressing?
<qyliss>
They're also in October I think? They're using BigBlueButton, and they've been holding a couple of test events to make sure they have it scaled appropriately.
<qyliss>
Like, they'll just stream one talk, and announce it a bit beforehand to test their setup.
<qyliss>
Which seems like a really smart way of resolving unknows.
<nbathum>
yes I understand how to iterate
<qyliss>
I just thought it was really cool because I haven't seen an event do this before
<nbathum>
can you setup a BigBlueButton server to test it out?
<qyliss>
Yeah, could do
<qyliss>
Although I'm not sure it would be the right tool for us with breakouts and stuff
<nbathum>
well folks already asked/mentioned about disliking youtube as a primary streaming platform
<qyliss>
But I think I'd be happy to come up with a proposal if it's going to get a fair hearing
<nbathum>
so if we can prove BBB for primary stream, maybe use jitsi for breakout?
<puck>
I could write a utility that allows people to create their own breakout rooms
<puck>
on BBB, that is
<qyliss>
For a primary stream I think it would be reasonable to just have a standard one-to-many streaming server rather than BBB or something
<qyliss>
if people are leaning towards Discord to the extent that it would at this point be difficult to convince them otherwise, I'd like to know that now.
<qyliss>
But otherwise I will see what I can do with a proposal
<nbathum>
not at all. I can only speak for myself, and I am mainly interested in having the conference go off smoothly. and I don't have the means/time/knowledge to sit down and try out all of the different software for streaming and audio
<qyliss>
Cool!
<nbathum>
to the extent that I have seen jitsi and BBB used, they do seem like viable options, as long as the management/setup/hosting can be championed by someone besides me xD