Hello #fediverse,
we are #Senfcall and we are #hosting #privacy-friendly #BigBlueButton #videoconferences.
Free as in #freedom AND #free as in beer. (donations are welcome)
You don't even have to register an account (unless you need persistent rooms). Just visit https://senfcall.de/en/ - klick on "start meeting", enter meeting name (password optional), press "start" enter your name and have fun senfing. The call-invite link you find at the top of the chat.
@nurinoas because we have been approached by non german speakers and english is a language understood by many people (and we are also pretty confident in using it ourselves).
We might add other languages in the future but for now we will stick with German and English.
@senfcall Über random-redirect.de seid ihr und wackerer "Wettbewerb" zu finden. Es kann gar nicht genug BBB- und Jitsi-Instanzen geben.
@mupan ich vermute, dass die Menschen aus Ulm, deren Frontend wir geforked haben und wir die einzigen dort zu sein scheinen hängt damit zusammen, dass man bei den meisten anderen BBB-Hosting angeboten Accounts benötigt. Uns viele da z.B. noch https://meeten.statt-drosseln.de/ von @psy ein.
@senfcall
Süßer Senf!
@senfcall why senf? Mustard? I don't get it. 🤔 Lovely initiative!!!
@wendy there is a german saying that's called "seinen senf dazu geben" (adding your mustard). It means somebody shares an opinion in third-party conversation, usually without being asked.
We created Senfcall because we were forced to use unethical videoconference tools, without being asked and wanted to show that there's a different way.
@senfcall hey, we ( @domainepublic @nurpa @constant and more) are working on making #BigBlueButton more available for more Belgian organisations. How do you manage to keep the openness? BBB is quite resource hungry..
@wendy @senfcall @domainepublic @nurpa @constant choose hardware that brings the best concurrent users / server-cost ratio, rent dedicated servers with current AMD Ryzen CPUs at a big datacenter provider like Hetzner, rent lots of dedicated servers, automate everything, use Ansible.
@wendy in production, BBB tends to be a bit less or equally resource hungry than Jitsi, once you set it up with settings that are optimized for your use case.
@basisbit hi, thanks for your answer. Are there examples online for optimal configuration of your #BigBlueButton server? I know there is a thing as a search engine 😉 but as self-hosters it would be great to have some really good example configs, reduce energy use, limit bandwidth and optimisation of speech quality!
@wendy mainly the things that @basisbit said. The best starting point is the #BigBlueButton documentation, where you find most of the necessary recommendations:
https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/support/faq.html
There are also some google groups mailing lists for community support: https://bigbluebutton.org/support/community/
That's mostly what we are using, basisbit might have further recommendations. For german speakers there is also the #divoc-meeting every monday: https://di.c3voc.de/user:bigbluebutton
@wendy sorry, but for hosting a video conferencing service like BBB, you'll have to read lots of documentation and know what your requirements are. I'd suggest you to start small and then grow your user base.
How many concurrent users and how many concurrent sessions do you expect? On average how many people with webcam enabled per meeting?
@wendy stuff you definitely should read:
https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/admin/privacy.html
https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/2.2/setup-turn-server.html
https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/admin/monitoring.html
https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/support/faq.html
https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/2.2/install.html#installation-choices
https://groups.google.com/g/bigbluebutton-setup/c/3Y7VBllwpX0/
@senfcall Welcome to the Fediverse and thank you for what you're doing with #BigBlueBotton! I am new to it, but was somewhat familiar with #Jitsi already. I'd be open to any thoughts you may have on comparison between the two. (It's great we have two open source video calling ecosystems now!)
@jgoerzen i'd say it's mainly feature-wise. #BigBlueButton has an integrated pad and shared presentations with drawing. In our experience BBB is easier to change to custom setups. #Jitsi on the other hand is easier to set up.
We can't say much about the compliance of Jitsi, but to be #GDPR compliant, BBB needs a bit of tweaking. We developed some tools for this purpose, which you can find here: https://senfcall.de/en/opensource
@senfcall That's fantastic. Thank you!
@jgoerzen and i forgot: BigBlueButton has more advanced moderation features.
@senfcall great initiative! Thanks !
@senfcall
How come that senf in English?
Will you add other languages?