Highlands & Islands GreensJan 26

#DigitalSovereignty

➡️ France announced today it’s phasing out Teams, Zoom, etc. to be replaced with a French/European solution called Visio.

The data is hosted on @outscale

Transcripts and subtitles are also handled by French providers.

The target is set on 2027 for government agencies.

Show threadBill Woodcock
@HI_Greens

Specifically:

https://docs.numerique.gouv.fr/docs/1ef86abf-f7e0-46ce-b6c7-8be8b8af4c3d/
Docs

Docs: Your new companion to collaborate on documents efficiently, intuitively, and securely.

Jan 26 at 8:21pmWeb
Show threadHighlands & Islands GreensJan 26
@woody It's rather a shame that it's not suitable for webinars, just smaller meetings.
Show threadBill WoodcockJan 26
@HI_Greens

Have you been running it? How does it compare with Jitsi?
Show threadHighlands & Islands GreensJan 26
@woody We haven't tried it out yet, we just found out about the French gov't's plans today.
One of us tried out a conference platform called BlueJeans, which came out at the same time as Zoom and had vastly better sound, but it did not survive as far as she knows.
Show threadBill WoodcockJan 26
@HI_Greens

Yeah, Bluejeans was bought by Verizon and shut down. We've used Jitsi for the last ten years, and generally been happy with it, but it doesn't stretch to more than about 30 users very gracefully.
Show threadGunChleocJan 27

@woody @HI_Greens If you're looking for a web conference software, take a look at BigBlueButton https://bigbluebutton.org/

It can be self-hosted

Virtual Classroom Software | BigBlueButton

BigBlueButton is an open source virtual classroom software. This platform was developed for virtual learning and education. Try it today!

BigBlueButton - Open Source Web Conferencing
Show threadCubeThoughtsJan 26
@HI_Greens @woody Having a very quick look at the github of La suite Meet https://github.com/suitenumerique/meet it seems it's an implementation of another project called LiveKit. A recent blog post of LiveKit talks about their "Grok Voice Agent API in partnership with xAI". The beauty of FLOSS, no need to agree with the original developer!
GitHub - suitenumerique/meet: Open source video conferencing app powered by LiveKit.

Open source video conferencing app powered by LiveKit. - suitenumerique/meet

GitHub
Show threadHighlands & Islands GreensJan 26

@CubeThoughts Yuck! That doesn't sound very good

@woody

Show threadCubeThoughtsJan 26
@HI_Greens @woody https://blog.livekit.io/xai-livekit-partnership-grok-voice-agent-api/
Introducing the Grok Voice Agents API with xAI

You can now build voice agents using the same tech stack that powers Grok’s voice experiences at global scale.

LiveKit Blog
Show threadBill WoodcockJan 26
@CubeThoughts @HI_Greens

Ouch. That's unfortunate.
Show threadCubeThoughtsJan 26

@HI_Greens @woody Again, doesn't mean that the French gvmt implementation is bad, just that upstream, they're a open source but for profit venture capital funded (from my quick look) US based company, which thinks integration with Grok is a competitive advantage.

I would assume the French are not implementing that API!

Show threadTungsten_carbide 🍉Jan 26
@HI_Greens @woody the french state has another option for larger meetings and webinars though, it's called "Webinaire de l'État" and is based on #BigBlueButton and says it supports up to 350 people, as opposed to only 150 for Visio.
https://webinaire.numerique.gouv.fr/home
Webinaire de l'État

Show threadBill WoodcockJan 26
@Equity7804 @HI_Greens

Yeah, to the best of my knowledge Big Blue Button has been widely used in American schools, so has a very active base of code contributors, but is pretty much targeted at the seminar use-case. But I haven't ever run it myself, so that's my second-hand impression.