Hybrid streaming sessions – free and open

Wondering what the title means?

Free and public stream sessions I have taken a lot of and organised also. Most recently also I had delivered a session at a hybrid technical event. Out of the five total sessions, two were remote, and the others in-person. This article explores my outline towards a very low-cost solution to handle the same situation. To summarize the options are as follows. Will go in detail about each of the functions and steps as the article proceeds.

  • Live Stream (Linkedin, YouTube, Twitch and endless others)
  • AWS Cloud Front and AWS Media Services
  • OBS Studio (Free broadcaster)
  • BigBlueButton (FOSS video conferencing solution)
  • AWS EC2 / Fargate (Hosting of BigBlueButton)
  • AWS Route53 (DNS and Domain)
  • AWS CloudFront (Low latency endpoints)
  • LetsEncrypt (Free SSL)
  • DroidCam (Use mobile as a Camera for OBS)

There are multiple documents and detailed setup information for almost all the tools referenced available on the internet. I followed several ones to configure the suit and finally almost there, now its only setting up my studio room that is pending which would be completed by early 2023 and start some video sessions with live on YouTube or LinkedIn.

OBS Studio can be installed as per the KB Article Install Instructions on the obs project site. Live Streaming to AWS Media Services can be configured by referring to the blog article Connecting OBS Studio to AWS Media Services in the Cloud written by Dan Gehred and Steve Ward. The article How to broadcast to LinkedIn with OBS on Restream is a good read and reference to configure OBS broadcasting to LinkedIn.

BigBlueButton is an open source video conference system that supports various audio and video formats and allows the use of integrated video-, screen- and document-sharing functions. BigBlueButton has features for multi-user whiteboards, breakout rooms, public and private chats, polling, moderation, emojis, and raise-hands. The blog post How to build a scalable BigBlueButton video conference solution on AWS by David Surrey and Bastian Klein gives full instructions as to how the BigBlueButton video conferencing solution can be installed and run on AWS Ec2. The authors continue to explain how AWS customers who are looking for a self-managed and open-source software-based video conference solution can leverage AWS to build and deploy a scalable BigBlueButton setup. They also explain how to use the necessary scripts and stack templates.

There is much more to explore on the basis of these but I am satisfied with what I already have and will try to bring out a full demo or video tutorial on how I configured the whole thing at a later stage. With dedication towards my official status and the vacations and mundane things related to activities at my #organic Farm and during the start of 2023 would be a bit too busy restructuring my workshop room into a serviceable studio.

PHP TestFest 2009

It’s time to start getting the 2009 PHP TestFest underway. The TestFest is a worldwide event in which PHP user groups and individuals contribute to PHP by writing tests for PHP. It’s a great way to contribute to one of the most successful open source projects there has ever been, it’s also pretty cool to see your name in the the source distribution for code that’s running on over 20 million web domains.

So how does it work?

User groups can register by sending a mail to php-qa@lists.php.net. In the mail we’d like you to pick an date for your event (somewhere between April 1st and June 30th), it would be great if you could let us have the name and e-mail for the primary contact too. As these arrive on the QA list, someone (probably me) will transfer them to the TestFest wiki. We will help you to work out what sort of event to run and how to organise it. Individuals can register for the TestFest too, just send a mail to the php-qa@lists.php.net.

User groups (or individuals) can pick areas in which they’d like to write tests, this might be something you know quite well already, or maybe something new you’d like to know about. For example, the London PHP group picked the dom extension last year. I didn’t know much about that when we started but I did when we finished!

What do we need?

A bit of infrastructure! Scott MacVicar is putting together an SVN repository for tests so that contributors will be able to commit tests directly. He’s still working on how access control will work….more on this later.

Sponsors! We have one offer of ElePHPants. We’ll do the same as we did last year and hold a draw at the end of the TestFest. Anyone who contributes a test will have a chance to win one. Of course, the more you contribute the higher your chances will be!

Mentors, mentors and more mentors! We need internals developers who know how to write tests, have karma in cvs.php.net and who can review tests and commit them. Again – if you can help with this send a note to the php-qa@lists.php.net or let me know on IRC (efnet #php.pecl or freenode #phptestfest, #phpwomen).

For more information on PHP’s TestFest have a look here and here