Non-Profit Tools

(Originally Posted 5/3/2007)

Web Meetings are an extremely powerful tool if you are able to conduct them. Unfortunately, programs such as WebEx are very expensive to use. Recently I came upon an Open Source alternative called DimDim. I have installed this on our company’s server and had a chance to play around with it.

DimDim provides the following features:

Presentation and Document sharing.

Perfect for sharing documents with those outside of your office. Although there were some lag issues (most likely related to our connection here in the office) the speed was relatively good. Initially the quality of the picture was poor but this can be adjusted in the settings resulting in a much better quality picture. Although it is still below the quality of WebEx it is also free so I had no complaints!

Audio and video sharing.
This can be very useful for discussing the documents. Video can make for great presentations. On my computer at work I did not have access to a web cam so I was not able to check the video quality but the audio came through without any problems.

Application sharing.
This works along the same lines as the document sharing aspect but allows you to share other programs.

White board and Annotations.
Realistic interactive collaboration which involves a lot of annotations, corrections, group drawing (and doodles in the margin) is enabled through digital whiteboard and annotations feature of Dimdim. These features are possible on existing documents too leading to seamless distributed brainstorming.

Chat.
The chat feature is unobtrusive but useful when you need it.

Polls.
Polls enable the presenter to gauge the mood of the participants and to take decisions considering the opinions of many. I did not try this feature myself but it could be very useful when conducting trainings or other activities.

Question manager.
Question manager which is like a moderated Q&A setup enables the presenter to better manage the interaction.

Record and Archive. Enterprise Version Only
All the interaction is recorded and archived for sharing with non-attendees and to reach a broader audience. Great for recording trainings for later use.

Support for DimDim mainly comes from the Community lead forums (as is common among Open Source applications.) Most of my questions were answered very quickly using a simple search through the forum. If your question is not answered there then response time on the forums seems to be very fast.

Installation of DimDim was a fairly easy process. I installed it on to our server although the website indicates that any XP machine with at least 1 GB of RAM can act as a server. We are still working on issues with the firewall to allow connections to come in from the outside but the program worked very smoothly first time when accessed from within our network.

An Enterprise Version of DimDim is also planned which will have a cost per user but provide more support. Details are not available at this time but I expect that it will cost less than WebEx.

My first impression of DimDim is that it is a great tool which can only get better as it leaves the Alpha testing phase and moves towards its final release.

1. Kelsey C says:

   January 31, 2010 at 9:12 pm

   Interesting points. You might also look into RHUB Web Conferencing. Our company uses RHUB for remote desktop sharing.