Venueless

For 2021, we are considering using the conference platform called Venueless. There are technical details to figure out. An alternative is the Zoom conference platform alone.


 * Venueless gives a platform that registrants would log in to. The interface is nice.  It's simple.  Not every option is made plain though.  We'll need to explain a bit to attendees.
 * There are a variety of text chat channels within it -- one-to-one for conference
 * In tests we were able to pipe a Streamyard video stream into Venueless. There was a delay of some seconds, which is fine.  The connection involves a URL and a "token" of the RTMP kind.  I did not understand more but our team was able to do it.
 * Necessary standards to pipe video between programs over the net: HLS + RTMP
 * Simultaneous interpretation?
 * Integration with Streamyard (and restream.io?). These offer backstage workspaces for presenters.  Streamyard can pipe both to Venueless (we think) and to YouTube.
 * Integration with Zoom -- maybe just links to zoom meetings. That's enough.  For safe-space purposes we want to protect links to zoom meetings/presentation spaces
 * YouTube: Venueless can play a YouTube video, or (we think) a livestream from youtube.  It can't send a video to youtube live.
 * Can it record the video during an event?
 * Can we get the interface to show Spanish or English as a user preference? Can we pre-configure the language based on user preferences?  These are important, and require some special configuration/development.
 * Safe space / friendly space capabilities look good. Attendees will all have registered in advance or be specifically admitted by us.  Users can text to one another or pose comments/questions; admins can silence these posts or ban/exclude a user.
 * We've requested that conferences be able to offer both English and Spanish interfaces: https://github.com/venueless/venueless/discussions/277