A bunch of public and private school districts are just getting used to using Zoom, and their demand has blown up since giving unlocked accounts to schools for free… and now with both major privacy and security revelations recently, school districts are starting to ban its use just as quickly. Many of them also use Google Drive to reduce storage costs, but our state AG also has a lawsuit on Google for data mining students.
There is definitely room for Nextcloud to pick up popularity, both among data storage and teleconferencing.
Schools and Colleges are using Big Blue Button as their preferred communication tool (if they are not using Office365 or GSuite) as it includes white board, break out rooms etc. Our ‘Talk with Big Blue Button’ App is used in production and ready for prime-time.
We listed on the README a few things that need to be done (3 things to be exact). If interested, Nextcloud folks can reach out to me to plan next steps. As it is, it serves our purpose very well, time for the community / NC to step in if more customisation are needed.
@menelic
I can’t speak on the veracity of this claim. But I can tell you that Big Blue Button has been around for a very long time (and others too, like Red5; Jitsi is over 10 years old). I can’t see any good reason for NC to support a no-name no-body small basement outfit with their own implementation of some esoteric signalling algorithm no one knows about and they keep their own server closed source. All their public repos on Github are abandoned and desolate.
And I am mincing my words …
However, to say it’s business and provides a stream of revenue to finance operations, that … I buy.
Nice. I’m not sure abut the UI but this can be discussed of course. Can you make this installable as a separate app? Maybe as a plugin for Talk. Or as a complete standalone solution that can be used in parallel to Talk?
Agreed, we need to change the name (mentioned in the README)
It was meant as a drop-in replacement for Talk as we faced hurdles for large audiences. We’d appreciate some assistance as this is our first NC App. In terms of plugin for Talk, not sure as I haven’t seen such support for Talk.
What don’t you like about the UI – it’s the same UI as NC Talk
Except, that we go full width when starting a new call (as the BBB client was designed for that, which makes sense given all the features on-screen, such as presentation, chat room etc.) – Note: image in README to be updated
In the doc, its clear : “You have a Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit server that meets the minimum specifications”
I cant install a second server and my current server is not powerful enough… doesnt matter
Hi thanks for the information!
Do you know any BBB hosting? I’m not sure I can get a server at this moment and test, so a BBB hosting at an affordable price would be more than welcome
Thank you, cheers!
you can use a vps from Hetzner for testing, they have hourly billing, I use the CX21 it is enough for a small number of users. BBB have an installation scipt, so easy, it worked perfectly
Two reasons: 1) I’d like to test it with colleagues and 2) I’d like to rely on a hosted solution thus not having all the troubles of maintaining a server on my own
– it’s the same UI as NC Talk