ISOC ZA AGM

My first two days in the "not working for Jam" portion of my monthly calendar were spent working on preparing for the ISOC ZA AGM last night. This involved setting up an icecast server and darkice client (about two hours) and trying different microphones (another two hours), fighting dodgy network cabling (30 minutes) and trying to get a Bluetooth headset to work (10 hours, unsuccessful).

The ISOC AGM was different in two main ways this year.

First, it was in Cape Town. My oft-collaborator Alan Levin did a lot of work to forge a strong Cape Town unofficial ISOC chapter over the last year, and that was rewarded by having the ISOC AGM here. Which also led to Alan being made Chairman, and the committee being 4 members from each of Cape Town and Gauteng.

Second, it was streamed out using icecast (two servers, choice of mp3 and ogg vorbis on my server) and people could participate using IRC. This worked out pretty well, with about 15 people participating using IRC, and some listening to the streams but not using IRC.

I think the streaming and IRC portion worked particularly well, and Alan remarked we should try it again for our Community Forum events - where we get people to speak about a technology or law or something to the ISOC membership.

What's really exciting for me is the progress on the Internet Fiesta planning that ISOC in CT were driving. Basically, we'll be getting a large venue and shoving tons of computers with dedicated Internet access and allow people, and hopefully predominantly kids that don't have access to computers, to find out what they're missing out on.