i wasn’t sure just what to expect last night at the 2nd anniversary video chat with manny. but, it was fun and interesting. some stuff was a bit more technical then i could handle, but that’s ok. i leave that to those of you who do get it. we talked about everything in under the sun. from how much we cared for sandy, to what we can do to help TuD become even better then it already is, to star wars. (by the way manny, my son-in-law was reaching over my shoulder to express his love of star wars and how there can never be too much star wars. he wants to know if you have played the star wars lego games for ps2) as manny would say there were a few bugs that we need to iron out with the co-hosting part of the video part, but all in all it was really great to be a part of it. i felt even more part of the family. manny is fun to tease and was a great sport. i have been watching the where in the great lakes are you and have noticed a big concentration of members from ohio on to the upper lakes. western ny has very few people who are getting the message. or they are not interested in sharing themselves with others. it saddens me to think that they might know about us but are too much in denial to come to us. i know of one woman who has been given the info and just won’t join. she has already lost one leg to this disease, and has no intention of changing her habits. she is on her computer almost all day so joining would be so easy for her.
anyway, i just wanted to share my thoughts about the chat. i would like to see more of them.
I thought it was a lot of fun too. It was fast paced, and if you have to look at the keyboard like I do to type something, you might miss a few things, but that’s ok. My favorite part was seeing Manny blush. Sandy would have really loved participating.
Definitely fun. Fortunately I’m a moderately-fast typist. Even so it was hard for me to copy the convo to a document while still following everything… and then there were the one-sided parts where Manny spoke and everyone else typed.
In a chat where speakers are not moderated (i.e., anyone can type at once), there are generally multiple conversations going on at the same time, and after a while you learn to keep track of who is saying what to whom, or to which conversation thread a particular response belongs. (Sometimes I’ll precede the comment with the name of the speaker to whom I’m addressing a comment, making it a bit easier to put into a thread – but when things are fast and furious, it’s not always possible to do so.)
Chats, in venues where the entire chat can be automatically logged, are actually a good way of getting business done. They have much of the personality of a face-to-face meeting without having to get dressed and go somewhere, plus, there’s automatically an accurate transcript from which minutes can be drawn. It also allows participants to share links to resources real-time, so they can be looked over, vetted, and/or voted on right then and there.
Personally, I’m a fan of private-network IRC (Internet Relay Chat), so I’m always looking for that sort of functionality in any Webchat system. The ability to change one’s name in-channel (using the “/nick” command) and perform actions (the “/me” command) are only part of the functionality I’ve come to expect – but so rarely find outside of traditional IRC. Other than that, the UStream channel had very fast response, which is important in a fast-and-furious chat session!
I couldnt get mine changed either!,But all in all it was a blast!..was just fortunate to get to spend time with all,we really have some funny people on here! Maybe we need to have a Diabetic comics nite out!,lol
In the place where you normally type what you’re going to say, you type instead
/nick debb
or
/nick MarieB
or
/nick JustBrowsing
and hit “Send”.
It will then change your nick to
debb
or
MarieB
or
JustBrowsing