BerkeleyTIP Great progress VOIP November - Dec 6 = Improve VOIP

[john_re]

We made GREAT progress with the November 1 meeting! :)  I really can't
believe how happy I am about it, & how far we advanced.

We went from in September having no online attendees,
to in October having 1 person remote on IRC, to in
November having 7 people around the US all in a VOIP conference!  It was
_fantastic_!  I was very impressed.  

I'm especially impressed with our online members, who basically took the
info I had in the VOIP data page, & found a conference #, set up a
conference, & got logged in, all while I was taking a short break!  :)

Besides two of us on VOIP in Berkeley, we had Oakland, San Fran, San
Jose, Washington state, & North Carolina.  Plus we had at least two
other person on IRC who didn't have time to get on VOIP.

It was so very enjoyable talking & listening to the guy in North
Carolina - he had a _very_ strong southern accent, & I _rarely_ get to
talk with someone with that accent.  It was so fun knowing I was
listening to someone who was _unmistakeably_ _not_ from the BayArea!

We had a UCB student join us on IRC from one of the dorms - he'd seen
the announcement I sent on the UCB SciPy list.

This is all doubly exciting, because I _still_ didn't even get the
announcements out until less than 24 hours before hand. Think how many
more people might see the announcement in time to join us if I get it
out 1 or two weeks ahead of time!

Good progress is me getting _this_ announcement out about 3 weeks
before the meeting to the BTIP groups.  My goal is to get announcements
to the "outside" mailing lists both this coming weekend (2 weeks) & the
following weekend (1 week ahead).  This will allow many more people to
schedule the December 6 meeting into their schedules.  :)

===================
December 6 Progress Opportunities:

Some things I might be doing:
Getting announcements out for the first (or first advanced) time to
Debian, GNU, FreeBSD, KDE, & maybe Ubuntu, Ekiga & Asterisk & 10
California LUG lists.

Based on discussion that we didn't have a way to see a list of who was
in the VOIP conference room, like in an IRC client, that is a possible
target for the December Programming party.  Maybe we can make some web
ap that can do that?  Or, some Python program which is like a IRC client
for VOIP conference rooms?  Perhaps we can modify the Ekiga sw?

Also, I'll try to notify the Ekiga & Asterisk people about this, in case
they'd like to help out.

Discussion might be about K-Ubuntu 8.10.

There's a new video from Christine Peterson about Open Source
Environment Sensing.  If you know of any new FSW videos, please email me
or the list so I can put them on the BTIPG video page.

Any comments or questions?      Hope to see you in person in Berkeley,
or VOIP conference with you all on Sat Dec 6.  :)

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