Team CommUNITY is Moving to a BigBlueButton Coop. Here’s Why:
We are happy to announce that we have joined the Online Meeting Cooperative, allowing us to now offer BigBlueButton as part of the package of video conference tools we make available to our community for use during events, gatherings, and private meetings.
In the past year, the pandemic has pushed all our activity online, making us more dependent on online tools to organize, mobilize and collaborate. We were aware of the benefits of BigBlueButton (BBB) considering it checks all the boxes our community loves:
It is Open Source
It Allows for Self-Hosting
The UX is pretty amazing
However, the challenge we had is that hosting video conferencing tools can be both difficult and expensive. Luckily, during the pandemic a BBB was established by a global coalition of co-operatives called Meet.coop which helps remove some of the largest barriers some groups and organizations face when trying to adopt BBB as their platform of choice. The coop is pretty amazing, and we have included some more information about them below, as we think it's an incredible resource for the digital rights community.
The move to join the Meet.coop collective allows us to use BBB without having to put a huge strain on our very small team. In addition, we benefit from being part of an amazing co-op, made up of like-minded people and organizations, while fitting nicely with our values of focusing on collaboration and solidarity.
Does this Mean You Will be Using BBB For Every Team CommUNITY Gathering?
Not exactly. We are guided by people’s needs, seeing technology as a tool to help address those needs. As such, we will be working with each of our regional community facilitators and presenters so they can select the best option for their context and threat model. However, needless to say, we think BBB will be one of the most used platforms.
Meet.coop is Pretty Awesome
Meet.coop was born in the Internet Freedom community during the pandemic because of the needs they were seeing for an open-source, self-hosted alternative to video-conferencing. Currently, the multi-stakeholder cooperative offers various paths to join, including non-monetary options, which we think is great for the purpose of equity. The tools they host are powered by renewable energy, which are run on cooperatively owned infrastructure. In addition, each co-op member gets their own customized URL. Our experience thus far has been pretty awesome, and we highly recommend that digital rights organizations check them out.
Benefits of BBB
The platform is in-browser, meaning that there are no downloads. In addition, the features it offers are pretty amazing and include:
Shared notes
Breakout rooms
Closed captions
Multi-language support
Screen sharing
Share a YouTube, Vimeo video
Public and private chat
Whiteboard for collaborative annotations and drawings
Poll feature to gather feedback quickly
The ability to switch presentation modes; PDFs, .doc, .pptx
In addition, we hope to help Meet.coop improve their BBB offerings in the future, by providing them with feedback for improvements or new features that we are getting from community members. We especially hope to contribute towards improving accessibility.