SpeakApp
brainstorming meetings online

Who are we?

The GAMBIT Community consists of approximately 50 particle and astrophysicists from 16 countries, drawn approximately equally from theory and experiment. We develop a large-scale computational framework for combining all relevant searches for new particles and symmetries of nature, and use it for testing and comparing different theories for new physics.

The challenge

In GAMBIT we have regular all-community meetings where we need to talk and share slides, as well as a constantly-changing set of dedicated working group meetings for our Dark Matter, Collider, Flavour, Cosmology, Scanner, Core and Models Workgroups, as well as various project-specific meetings. Our meeting usage can fluctuate from 2 hours in some weeks, to more than 50 hours in others, when we are in the midst of a face-to-face meeting. Many of our members connect to the meetings whilst traveling, from trains, airports or far-flung parts of the world with poor internet connections.

Why SpeakApp?

We don't really need video, but we do need high-quality, reliable audio connections, and the ability to easily share and discuss slides. We've tried many other systems, and SpeakApp has been both the most robust so far, and the one with the best interface for slide sharing. The ability of non-presenters to directly change slides and control the pointer in order to show what they are talking about is really useful.

Endorsement

We have been very happy with the robustness and simplicity of SpeakApp — it lets us get on with things rather than messing around trying to get people (re-)connected and sucking up masses of bandwidth in order to share their screens.