Comments for etbe - Russell Coker

Comment on Effective Conference Calls by -dsr-

-dsr- — Wed, 22 May 2013 01:36:41 +0000

Yes, muting all but one member is easy. Here are realtime commands available for an Asterisk conference:

Meetme List all conferences
MeetMe kick Kick a user out of a conference
MeetMe kick all Kick all users
MeetMe list List participants in a conference
MeetMe lock Lock a conference – no more users
MeetMe unlock Unlock a conference
MeetMe mute Mute a user in a conference
MeetMe unmute Unmute a user in a conference

These can all be sent via the Asterisk Gateway Interface, which can be as simple as sending text through a socket.
Libraries are available, too.

Comment on No Backups WTF by etbe

etbe — Wed, 22 May 2013 01:30:20 +0000

http://www.osnews.com/story/19266/WTFs_m

Thomas, thanks for that reference. The above URL seems to be the origin of the picture in question.

Comment on Effective Conference Calls by etbe

etbe — Wed, 22 May 2013 01:24:16 +0000

Andre: Thanks for the suggestion, but I’m after something free and open – or at least not as difficult and proprietary as Adobe products.

Greg: That’s an interesting concept but it sounds a little complex. In almost every other form of discussion (basically everything other than forums) the issue of who gets to speak isn’t determined by a vote.

dsr: Does Asterisk support muting all but one member of the call? Asterisk is quite complex and I’m dubious about the idea of anything being reasonably easy to implement.

Comment on Effective Conference Calls by -dsr-

-dsr- — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:13:52 +0000

You can implement a conference call system like that in Asterisk with either the MeetMe or ConfBridge modules. The next-in-queue and pick-a-speaker functions aren’t there, but can probably be implemented reasonably easily.

Comment on No Backups WTF by Thomas

Thomas — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:39:21 +0000

Maybe you do not know the link, we have this one on our pinboard in the office. :)

Comment on Effective Conference Calls by Greg

Greg — Sun, 19 May 2013 18:10:06 +0000

How about an option that would allow participants to vote on who gets to speak. Someone could initiate a vote, then once a quorum or majority settles on one person a tone or other announcement would indicate the speaker will change in 5 seconds to give the current speaker a chance to sum-up.

A modification could be to allow somekind of weighted voting for corporate or other situations where a subset of participants can drive the call to keep the group out of the weeds, etc. The subset could even have the option of using their extra weight or not when voting so if things are moving ahead, allow a democratic flow, but if the group gets off topic, they could vote with their extra weight to force things ahead.