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Dim Dim D'oh
26 Mar 2009I’ve been looking at a number of broadcast technologies recently like Adobe Connect and Instant Presenter. Several months ago I came across Dim Dim and in essence I have been fond of this Open Source option as it offers free meetings for up to 20 users and it is constantly being developed.
Tomorrow I’m going to be demonstrating Dim Dim and Vyew to one of the Academy users as options for a meeting next week. Not a strategic decision or anything just fulfilling a practical need. The idea is the user will have both demonstrated and they can choose which one they will find easier. Now my preference is for Dim Dim over Vyew for this as Vyew is more about collaboration for me whereas Dim Dim is more about presentation.
The user is going to be using our in place video conferencing equipment but someone at our end will be giving a PowerPoint presentation and someone at the other end will also be giving one. Both systems allow PowerPoint slides to be uploaded and allow the control of the screen to be passed to different users. If necessary both systems also have screen sharing should all the bells and whistles be in a PowerPoint presentation be necessary to view … but I will be warning of lag in viewing at the other end (there’s bound to be some latency).
I decided that I’d have a quick practice this evening to ensure that everything was up to the job and it is except I’ve discovered a bit of a glaring omission in Dim Dim. In the current version you can pre-schedule a meeting and set everything up ahead of time … with the exception of being able to upload any documents (i.e. presentations) ahead of time.
I did a quick test by starting the meeting, uploading a file, ending the meeting, and then starting the meeting again. The uploaded presentation had been lost. A quick search on the Dim Dim issue log yielded an unfortunate entry:
“how can I load a PPT presentation prior to the start of the meeting? If I try to do this now for a 3:30 meeting, the participants receive an e-mail that the meeting has started.”
Not only can you not preload presentations but when you first go into the meeting it e-mails attendees that it has started. I guess that’s where the lobby feature comes in, but I can’t believe that such a generally progressive system missed this (basic?) feature - a bit of a Dim Dim D’oh!
