Bringing a bunch of coders together can be fun and exciting to watch, and is done a lot these days for various purposes. It was suggested that a WebRTC hackathon would be a great idea for the upcoming WebRTC Conference & Expo, and I am interested in hearing other people’s perspectives on the opportunity. One thing I am curious about is the interaction between video servers and Web clients; unlike the phone system, putting someone on hold on a WebRTC video call is something relatively new. I think there are some opportunities to make the interaction between these systems something very different than what we experience on the phone.
Additionally, I don’t think today’s phone-based hold strategies even work for smartphones.
If I am playing a game and get distracted, the game icon on my computer flashes at me. What would be the equivalent of that for a WebRTC video call where I was put on hold and went to a different tab on my browser?
What about interacting with other navigating techniques, or restoring sessions? Of course, those are just places I would like to see some options and maybe some consistency.
We could also just have a hackathon to see what develops; perhaps a gamers’ hackathon for the data channel for when Web video conferences last too long. Or perhaps a better address book or connection for taking advantage of CRM APIs. These hackathons could deliver an ability to discover different end points and how to reach them.
Image via Wired
We learned that using Haxe Flambe, Nate Altschul of Nickelodeon and friends built more than 100 HTML5 games. Maybe our goal should be to see how many different implementations of WebRTC we can develop.
Or perhaps we should expand at what Temasys did at the last WebRTC Conference & Expo, and see how many sessions from how many continents we have go through the network. This would have to ignore the fact that historically, our network capacity has been taxed by the audience.
Maybe the equivalent of SMS for WebRTC should be part of what to do when the video server and the browser no longer can connect.
I am very curious what people would like to see, and will remind people that we not discussing interoperability here. At the next SuperOp, IMTC wants to explore interoperability issues with new and legacy video conferencing systems. If you are interested in participating you should contact Anatoli Levine, the president of IMTC at [email protected].
If you want to make a suggestion for the hackathon, please contract Phil Edholm, the chair of the WebRTC conferences, at [email protected].
And of course if you just want to add to the list of ideas, I am here: [email protected].
Edited by
Rachel Ramsey
