Open source tools for online conferences
From DoWire Wiki
Hosting Online Conferences Using Open Source Tools
One of the goals of the enhanced webcasting project is to to demonstrate how low-cost open source tools can be utilized for basic online conferences.
Most of the real cost associated with an online conference (a time-based event for structured exchange) is the time cost associated with organizing, facilitating, and presenting. These skills often require professional assistance from outside and sometimes inside an organization.
If your organization has the resources for a full service online conference provider, one that provides both the platform and the event facilitation, that is a recommended path. However, if your organization expects to host frequent online conferences, has human facilitation capacity, but lack a budget for technology hosting or platform development, open source options are for you. The goal is to reduce your reliance on a technology or platform provider while making it possible for you to leverage internal or external facilitation talent.
With the Webcasting E-Conference we've decided to streamline our ongoing community of practice and our need for structured conference session by supporting some Groupserver enhancements. We are using this tool in our sister UK pilot project on Issues Forums and are exciting about improving its feature set for all.
This article is designed to introduce you to a number of open source tools and other lower cost tools that you might use for any online conference.
Outline
Each category will list the top three or so open source choices with a link off to ODP or someother external directory to additional resources as well as to an example event demonstrating a niche online conference feature. Where no working open source solution is known, lower cost solutions can be pointed out.
Forums
Interviews
Questions and Answers
Presenting Slides Outline
Participant Networking
Chat
Audio Streaming
- Teleconference to Audio Streaming
Co-Browsing
More to come ...