Skype

So I have finally joined the Skype revolution, and boy was I impressed. Helped with the extra bandwidth allocation from ITS (I think) I had a long (over 30 minute) video call with absolutely no problems. My friend on the other end (Tobias) actually commented on the smoothness of my video link!

Anyway, the whole point of this Skype exercise is to participate over the Internet in the Digital Media Project (DMP)'s 10th General Assembly, where I have submitted a proposal that will hopefully be adopted as a standard! Due to financial reasons (cost was estimated about R15 000, which I had to pay by myself, and did not have at the time) I could not attend physically - so this Skype solution was proposed by the organisers.

Which brings me to my next pet project ... there are a lot of conferences in the world, and due to financial reasons, student participation from UCT at these conferences are minimal, restricted usually only if the student is presenting a paper (and even then I have known students not to get funding!). But, if research is to be truly "world class", participation at major conferences is a priority in many fields. And this is where Skype comes in. Skype seems very good at video (can even do full screen), and there is usually good bandwidth availability at conferences. Surely, it would therefore be easier to hookup a connection at these conferences and "broadcast" it back to UCT, where interested parties can then take part in the presentations and even forward questions to the speakers! This would be a step up from the blogging that Carl and I did from Siggraph and ACM-CCS respectively last year, and certainly more useful.

I know a few conferences might object, but assuming we have their blessing, this could certainly be a good step forward in engaging researchers around the world! So, as a start, I would like to invite anyone who is interested in the DMP to come around and join me (but I think it would be rather boring for most people). I am also willing to do a Skype broadcast from ISSA if anyone is interested and I am allowed to ...