Well, if it’s not interactive that sort of ruins the point. Good to know I don’t need to feel all that left out and missing something great thou.
And I have headphones, but I couldn’t speak myself. I could just unplug my webcam and speakers and I could listen in fine but a) that’d miss the whole point which is interaction and actually being social, and b) it feels like it’d be terribly impolite to just snoop in, taking up a limited hangout spot yet not contributing, taking advantage of others making themselves vulnerable by being on camera without returning the favour, etc.
While this wasn’t clear at the time, we eventually learned that extra people can log in, but will be restrict to the chat function. (We had two people at the event running “Hangout nodes”, and eventually I had to log off to make room, but then it became clear that I needed to be logged in at least to respond to chat messages, and when I tried it said “due to the number of participants you are automatically muted).
Lots of audio ended up causing problems, although people are communicating in the text-chat sidebar. We addressed some issues in the second presentation by having people submit questions via chat which were then read aloud.
I think a really workable interactive conversation is going to require everyone involved to have better sound equipment.
Well, if it’s not interactive that sort of ruins the point. Good to know I don’t need to feel all that left out and missing something great thou.
And I have headphones, but I couldn’t speak myself. I could just unplug my webcam and speakers and I could listen in fine but a) that’d miss the whole point which is interaction and actually being social, and b) it feels like it’d be terribly impolite to just snoop in, taking up a limited hangout spot yet not contributing, taking advantage of others making themselves vulnerable by being on camera without returning the favour, etc.
What on earth ever happened to the “LURK MOAR” philosophy?
Expected symmetry and limitations on the number of participants happened to it.
While this wasn’t clear at the time, we eventually learned that extra people can log in, but will be restrict to the chat function. (We had two people at the event running “Hangout nodes”, and eventually I had to log off to make room, but then it became clear that I needed to be logged in at least to respond to chat messages, and when I tried it said “due to the number of participants you are automatically muted).
Lots of audio ended up causing problems, although people are communicating in the text-chat sidebar. We addressed some issues in the second presentation by having people submit questions via chat which were then read aloud.
I think a really workable interactive conversation is going to require everyone involved to have better sound equipment.