Chatroom workshops part 2

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Posted by Banjophobic on Monday, February 1, 2016

1 person likes this

after a long hiatus I took the initiative and had another workshop via the chatroom. Since we lost our old IVocalize chatroom almost a couple years ago, there hasn't been any workshops held. Eric did decide to link a Google chatroom to us here, but it's limited to 10 participants total.

Many of the same chatroom "regulars" as we like to say, still inhabit the new Google room on a regular basis. Since I was kind of the initiator of workshops online here on BHO (Jim Pankey and I had the first online workshops on his web chatroom the "Banjo Lounge" a few years before the BHO did and it was Jims idea), I missed seeing them here.

These online workshops are so convenience and affordable and connect great players and teachers with players who eagerly want and need help with their playing. We have had Tony Trischka, Bill Evans, Pat Cloud, just to name a few well known teachers, in the old BHO chatroom workshop program. There were also highly respected old timeplayers and teachers too , including Jim Pankey and Scott Fore, and I envisioned tenor workshops too although that didn't have time to develop before the room closed for good.

I decided a few weeks ago to try and use the new Google Hangouts chat platform and see how that would work for workshops. Since I was familiar with them from using the BHOs Google chat, it was a pretty easy creation for the workshop( once I figured out how to get more than half the participants in the room before it started,haha...operator error).

All in all, I was very impressed with how ll the room worked, except for the missing text window, which should have been there for everyone to use. The older Ivocalize chatroom on BHO had a maximum participant level of thirty people, which Eric had to pay extra for. This free version of Google Hangout chat allows only ten persons at once, but I am investigating paying for a larger room if it's feasible.

This is not through the BHO "officially" but I will be giving a kickback to it for allowing me to "advertise" it on threads and seek participants through it.my hope was that eventually Eric would once again get a paid version of Ivocalize so we could continue the workshops here, but that's looking like it won't happen.

If there is enough interest, I would be looking to have at having possibly one workshop a month. Time will tell if there is enough interest in this again to make it something the BHO will embrace.

2 comments on “Chatroom workshops part 2”

thebanjobert Says:
Monday, February 1, 2016 @8:37:18 AM

I would be interested, John though I am reasonably computer illiterate. What is involved in entering the Google chatroom and participating? A Google account, I assume? Any special hardware needed?

Thx,
Terry