The successor to EVO, by the end of 2012, will be a commercial product called SeeVogh. We have started an evaluation process to see if SeeVogh will work for Fermi.
The initial offer from Philippe Galvez for Fermi would be ballpark $10k for an annual subscription, based on our usage from last year which was about 1100 meetings. Richard would like to compare that to WebEx or GoToMeeting. Alternatively if you buy as you go, the person setting up the meeting is designated the "moderator" and is responsible to pay for the meeting in "SeeVogh" credits. 60 minutes is the minimum meeting time. Right now 1 hour is 54 credits. Once the meeting has started, you cannot be refunded, even if you do not use up the full allotted time. This wouldn't be an issue if we had a subscription.
SeeVogh User Guide
http://seevogh.com/doc/SeeVogh_User_Guide_032612.pdf
Demo with Bob May, 2012
Joanne was completely unable to connect from three different machines: Mac OS 10.4 (too old), Ubuntu netbook (JAVA issue?), and RHEL5 (possibly due to a need for a native OpenGL driver).
Bob provided a nice demo of the video features of SeeVogh, including desktop sharing. Having a wired connection was vital to use the video at all, and even so, my DSL connection was not quite up to the task of keeping the desktop share usable.
First Test May 7, 2012
Questions that came up are highlighted.
Participants: Anders Borgland, Richard Dubois, Heather Kelly
Richard (Mac) and Heather (Windows 7) had no trouble getting connected. Anders (Linux) could not get the video client to start up and thus was also unable to see desktop shares (it complained about "Cannot load ViEVO lib vievoLib /afs/slac.stanford.edu/u/ek/borgland/.java/deployment/cache/6.0/3/33e21603-26a383f3-n/libvievoLib.so: libjawt.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory". It could be a simple PATH problem. I've attached the logfile.). Anders also could not speak. Richard acted as the moderator. The moderator controls the start of the meeting, so in effect there is no set meeting time. There is a one page used to set up the details including name and description of the meeting. Richard did not see a way to set "recurrence".
Anders did comment that Richard's audio was particularly clear and strong. Later on during the meeting, we did note that Richard's audio started to fade in and out. Typically it was when Richard would start speaking again, and then after a sentence or so the audio would pick up. It did not seem due to changes in his personal volume.
The default for audio and video seems to come up with the microphone un-muted and video on - it would be better to do the opposite. Similarly public chat should be on by default as well as the participants list.
Video is also on by default. The video window is shared so as more participants enter, each tile associate with each participant is given a smaller piece of the pie. Richard wondered how it would appear if there were 100 participants. (Actually he wondered what would happen with the participant list on the side for a large meeting.)
We tried out the "desktop share" by having Richard share his desktop and that seemed fine.
Under Menu->About there is a "Copy Log" button, it would be nice to locate this in a more prominant location under Menu. The ability to directly email the SeeVogh support team seemed to be missing; maybe the red cross button to just send the log.
The moderator controls the ending of a meeting - if we run over an hour, does the moderator get prompted to add additional time?
What if the moderator has to leave early, but the other meeting participants want to carry on?
Does leaving a meeting mean you have to exit the application entirely? Sometimes it is nice to be able to hop into another meeting straightaway.
Is there a capability to browse available meetings? Is there a password capability to prevent anyone browsing the meetings from joining?
Will there be the concept of a Fermi "Community" that our group can join? Will that change the meeting booking behavior - e.g. to allowance recurrence, perhaps no moderator needed to start/stop the meeting.
Does the moderator have control over attendees? Mute, eject etc?
Responses from Philippe:
(1) Anders's video Linux issue: I can see that it is looking for the
libjawt.so lib. You can see some hints at
(http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/jdk7-dev/2011-August/002256.html
or https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=124432)
(2) Anders's audio Linux issue: The code is the same as for EVO. He may
need to select the correct driver via the down arrow close the mic icon.
(3) Meeting recurrence: Not in this version but will come.
(4) Audio fading during the first sentence was probably due to the
autogain adjustment where the audio may be saturated and then adjusted.
You may want to check your input mike level on your Mac Audio Settings.
(5) Audio/Video unmuted was done on purpose as most new comers were
confused when not on. But this is configurable and will be adjustable
depending of the customers.
(6) Video streams is limited to 50 (low quality) maximum and will be
contained to some defined bandwidth and video will be configurable too.
The participants list will increase with a side bar when space is needed.
(7) The "Red Cross" missing button is something we are looking to add
going forward.
(8) When a meeting is over, the meeting is stopped but obviously some
mechanism to extend it will be build as we progress.
(9) If the moderator leaves then it doesn't affect the meeting at all
(10) Leaving the meeting means leaving the application
(11) For now, you have no function to list the ongoing meetings.
(12) We have a concept of "Corporate account" that will include all
members of an organization/group. That something we can demonstrate to
you if you want.
(13) You can moderate (mute, unmute, ...) the meeting by selecting your
name in the participant list and enter the moderator keys.
Question and Answer Time Between Richard and Philippe Galvez May 7,2012
Super. I assume if we subscribe then anyone in Ferm will be able to initiate meetings.
>Yes. Of course.
If I book a 1 hour meeting can people join the room early to make sure everything is working?
>It works a bit differently. You book a total time and it only starts but
>the moderator or who ever has the moderator key starts the meeting.
>In resume, you can reserve a meeting for 2 hours and not using it for
>weeks, the starting time only starts when you activate the meeting.
And will they be able to scan meetings in the community as we can now?
>
>Not for now. We are at the early stage.
Have you maintained your fleet of pandas etc in this transition? There will be lots of questions about the new system :-)
>
>Yes. All should be nearly transparent for the end user concerning the infrastructure.