Do you know how Discord compares to other options for group calls? I’d been planning to have the London meetup today on Google Hangouts on the basis of not needing people to download something (I think).
(Though downloading something is probably less of an issue if this is going on for months.)
I’ve been looking into ways of staying in touch with people while in quarantine, in particular Skype, Discord, Slack and now recently also Jitsi. Personally I have to unfortunately keep using all because of confusing Venn diagrams and people who are not tech savvy, but if you have the option to choose I recommend Discord over all the alternatives:
I think it works on all these operating systems, I can personally confirm Linux, Windows and Android. I did have some sound quality issues with voice conference calls on Android, but I doubt any competing software does better.
You all need to download the client to have video calls. You can have group voice calls and text messaging in-browser. [EDIT: for clarification, if some but not all of you have a client, those last few will not be able to send video. I don’t know if they can still watch other people’s video, they can definitely just join as a voice call.]
Regardless of the choice above you do need to make an account.
The quality is very decent. Setting the right sensitivity setting for your own microphone can be a bit finicky (the ‘automatic’ option is not always great). Other than that I have no complaints.
If the organiser leaves everybody can continue (in fact, people can spontaneously make more events provided the organiser has set these permissions). The way I’ve been holding events with Discord there’s really more of a ‘moderator’ (with the permissions to kick people form the server) than an ‘organiser’, although in practice these are often the same person.
Yes, there is text chat. Split in channels at your own desire, with option to link to other channels/specific messages and more. You can also have text channels and voice channels open simultaneously, These are open at all times, completely independent of the voice channels.
Yes, the bullet point list is for Discord. I only tried Jitsi for an hour or two, but the quality of the call was horrible and the session crashed when a second person joined (so really I could just see my own face, pixellated). When I tried to download the Ubuntu client I got dpkg errors and a failed installation. Maybe Jitsi is actually great(?), but I’m not very tempted to try again without outside help.
I think there’s a huge advantage towards having a general channel that can be used to communicate at all times of the day and not only when the formal meetup happens.
It’s infrastructure that can be valuable long after the initial organized meetups.
Yeah. We do have a Facebook group and slack channel for this, and the slack channel is barely used. But I could believe it would be valuable if it was used (it offers different affordances than Facebook, which is why we bothered to set it up). Discord is similar to that, and would be more likely to get used if it was also used for the meetups.
Hangouts worked fine today, but we’re leaning towards trying discord for next time.
Do you know how Discord compares to other options for group calls? I’d been planning to have the London meetup today on Google Hangouts on the basis of not needing people to download something (I think).
(Though downloading something is probably less of an issue if this is going on for months.)
Off the top of my head, relevant considerations for comparing options:
Does it work on Linux, Windows, OS X, Android and iPhone?
Does everyone need to download something?
Do users (and organizers, but less important) need to create an account with something?
What’s the quality like?
If the organizer needs to leave early, can everyone else stick around?
Is there text chat as well?
Is there text chat also available outside of the meetup times?
Is there value in picking the same option as other meetups?
I’m not sure how to weight these. I’m also not sure how much it really matters; it may be a case of “just pick something decently good”.
I’ve been looking into ways of staying in touch with people while in quarantine, in particular Skype, Discord, Slack and now recently also Jitsi. Personally I have to unfortunately keep using all because of confusing Venn diagrams and people who are not tech savvy, but if you have the option to choose I recommend Discord over all the alternatives:
I think it works on all these operating systems, I can personally confirm Linux, Windows and Android. I did have some sound quality issues with voice conference calls on Android, but I doubt any competing software does better.
You all need to download the client to have video calls. You can have group voice calls and text messaging in-browser. [EDIT: for clarification, if some but not all of you have a client, those last few will not be able to send video. I don’t know if they can still watch other people’s video, they can definitely just join as a voice call.]
Regardless of the choice above you do need to make an account.
The quality is very decent. Setting the right sensitivity setting for your own microphone can be a bit finicky (the ‘automatic’ option is not always great). Other than that I have no complaints.
If the organiser leaves everybody can continue (in fact, people can spontaneously make more events provided the organiser has set these permissions). The way I’ve been holding events with Discord there’s really more of a ‘moderator’ (with the permissions to kick people form the server) than an ‘organiser’, although in practice these are often the same person.
Yes, there is text chat. Split in channels at your own desire, with option to link to other channels/specific messages and more. You can also have text channels and voice channels open simultaneously, These are open at all times, completely independent of the voice channels.
I thought Jitsi could do video conference calls in-browser, no client download required.
Yes, the bullet point list is for Discord. I only tried Jitsi for an hour or two, but the quality of the call was horrible and the session crashed when a second person joined (so really I could just see my own face, pixellated). When I tried to download the Ubuntu client I got dpkg errors and a failed installation. Maybe Jitsi is actually great(?), but I’m not very tempted to try again without outside help.
I think there’s a huge advantage towards having a general channel that can be used to communicate at all times of the day and not only when the formal meetup happens.
It’s infrastructure that can be valuable long after the initial organized meetups.
Yeah. We do have a Facebook group and slack channel for this, and the slack channel is barely used. But I could believe it would be valuable if it was used (it offers different affordances than Facebook, which is why we bothered to set it up). Discord is similar to that, and would be more likely to get used if it was also used for the meetups.
Hangouts worked fine today, but we’re leaning towards trying discord for next time.