A Failure to Communicate on the Web

The Internet is not quite there yet, it seems.

This weekend in-between errands and trips to the cinema to watch “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2” I also tried to steal time to check in on Tolkien Moot, which is run by my friend Hawke Robinson.

Hawke puts his heart into these conventions but he seldom has much if any technical help on the production side. Tolkien Moot is singularly unique among science fiction and fantasy events in that it attempts to broadcast its activities live over a Webcam and audio feed. Hawke also schedules presentations from Tolkien scholars and other guests. And for the past few years we have broadcast live episodes of Middle-earth Talk Radio.

This year since I couldn’t attend Tolkien Moot Hawke had invited Bryan Huseland to join him as guest host. Unfortunately, my schedule forced me to take off about 30 minutes before the live broadcast. Knowing I would be in a free wifi zone I took my laptop with me. That was the last thing that went right.

For some reason I couldn’t get anything to work. I was able to view things from home yesterday and hear stuff and chat and everything but today everything stopped working. Hawke tells me one of his servers maxed out on connections and he had about 50-60 connections on the other (I may be getting some numbers mixed up here). It could be I was blocked by the free wifi provider, or that Hawke’s server couldn’t handle the load and I was closed out.

Or it could be that everything on my laptop decided to break down today. I installed updates and patches and ran fixer software. Whatever.

The point is that the Internet is not yet a ubiquitous communications medium. We’re not yet in the age of Star Trek Communications, where we can decide between taking a private broadcast or putting it on the main viewing screen.

Skype has almost spoiled me but it has enough issues that I am not yet ready to say it’s a true video communication medium. It’s a service. Google’s video chat in the Plus One field trial is impressive but also has some issues.

I want to be able to just pick a topic, start up a broadcast, and let it stream to whomever wants to watch it. I don’t want to have to have an engineer in the background making sure things work.

And I want to be able to check in on a stream without having to update software, be in the right place at the right time, or squeeze in just before the server hits its limit..

What was great for Tolkien Moot this weekend was that it ran into some limits (and I just got off the phone with Hawke, who says after he reset the limit he saw 50-60 persistent connections). More people tuned in to Tolkien Moot at any given time than ever before. And people were active in at least two chat rooms (including one at TheOneRing.Net if I understood him correctly).

It was a frustrating afternoon for me but apparently a better one for many other people. I’m glad to hear that.

Next year’s Tolkien Moot will be held the weekend of April 20-22. We’ll share more details as they become available. For the first time Tolkien Moot will be able to avail itself of professional quality local conference facilities, and hopefully that means more local people will be able to attend. But I’m sure the conference will also continue to build its online audience and relationship.

In the meantime, Hawke will get recordings of the various presentations online ASAP. He has already released a recording of his own presentation on Tolkien and Trees. I was able to download and watch that earlier today.