&yet

Thanks to you, our loyal Talky users, today we’re launching an all-new version that’s better, faster, stronger. (We can’t say harder, better, faster, stronger because actually we’ve been making it easier!)

Among other things we’ve added a few of the features you’ve requested most, such as in-session text chat so you can share links and other information during a call.

The big deal, though, is that we’ve upgraded the entire technology behind Talky so that you can meet with 15 or more people, at once. We’ve been using it regularly at &yet and it’s been great for our weekly full-team hangouts.

This version has been in beta for a few months now and it’s finally ready for prime time. We’ve also released an updated version of the Talky iOS app that works with the new backend technology so you can join a Talky room on the go from your iPhone or iPad.

A few weeks ago we talked about the need for private video chat and the challenges involved with making that a reality in a cloud-based environment. That’s why we’ve been working hard to build a version of Talky you can run on your company’s network to keep your voice and video traffic safely away from the public Internet.

We’re proud to announce that Talky On-Premise is now available.

Talky On-Premise takes the same ultra-simple experience you’ve come to love for video chat over the Internet, and moves it in-house. The installation is almost as easy as using Talky in the first place and the price is surprisingly affordable (as we like to say, the only thing astronomical about Talky is the rocket game, Lander).

As a part of continuous efforts to make our events as inclusive as possible we are very happy to announce diversity tickets.

How will diversity tickets work?

The tickets will work in the form of full conference experience scholarships (travel excluded) and we will be opening the application process in the coming weeks.

They are targeted towards members of underrepresented groups, which includes, but is not limited to: women, people of colour, LGBTQIA+ people, disabled people, and people facing economic or social hardships, who couldn’t participate otherwise.

At &yet we strongly believe that a better world not only starts at an individual level but also requires the effort from all of us. As we share not only our work but also process in the open we’d also like to do so with the diversity strategy we’ve prepared for &yetConf.

Code of Conduct and harassment prevention

Apart from focusing on designing an unforgettable experience our first and foremost responsibility towards everyone is enforcing a safe, entirely harassment-free, inclusive environment.

The presence of a Code of Conduct is fortunately (albeit slowly) becoming a standard for the event industry. At &yetConf all attendees, speakers and staff are required to familiarize themselves with the Code and follow its rules—that includes the main event as well as fringe happenings and social get-togethers. The contents of the Code of Conduct can be found both at &yetConf and Geek Feminism sites.

We're super excited to announce that we've added a new member to our team! Everyone, meet Sally Mohr!

Sally comes to us with a ton of experience in the business development and client relationship world. Oh, also? She happens to be an infectious fireball of energy and we're huge fans!

Sally's joining us as our new Director of Business Development. As &yet has grown and matured, we've seen a number of folks take significant roles in our business development activities, which has brought us to where we are, obviously, but we recruited Sally in order to double our ability to focus and put attention on these efforts. The passion and energy Sally has for cultivating and growing relationships between people and communities is remarkable, and exactly what we value across the board here at &yet, so it made perfect sense to add her to our team!

Isaac Lewis and Sally will work closely together to develop and strengthen our client relationships, our business development strategies, and our product sales strategies for requireSafe and Talky On-Prem.

Today we are announcing &yetConf, a conference about the intersections of technology with humanity, meaning, and ethics for people who believe the world should be better and are determined to make it so.

In 2013, we presented the most ambitious thing we've ever made: RealtimeConf. You can see the timeline of RealtimeConf experience outlined here. That event featured a novel by Mike Speegle that went on to win a Kirkus Indie Book of the Year award that led into a play that ran through the conference with original soundtrack by Ben Michel and a spellbinding original theme song by Alana Henderson. Oh, and there were a bunch of amazing presentations. And it all took place in a world we'd been slowly creating since the first RealtimeConf—one that left people saying things like, “All my expectations we're blown away. Wasn't expecting the level of artistry. Unbelievable, over the top and amazing.” (Emily "Nexxy" Rose)

As we've pursued bringing back RealtimeConf for 2015 and worked hard on some of the ridiculous creative things we have in store, the more we really felt constrained by the name. We really want to make something greater than RealtimeConf in all elements, and we don't want to be held back. Ultimately, we see conferences as a unique art form and we want to create an event unrestrained in its expression.

And so, we'd like to introduce &yetConf.

The Kickstarter for our video chat service Talky has come to a close. Unfortunately we didn't reach our goal, but realistically this was a truth we faced at the very beginning of this project.

What we didn't gain in funding we earned in observation and good ole fashioned market research. And we've learned a lot!

First, we have an amazing and supportive community who truly loves Talky and wants to see us succeed in our endeavors. Thank you so much if you shared our project, tweeted about it, sent it to folks, commented on it, reached out to us about it — you are the reason we put our hearts into our products the way we do. Thank you.

At &yet we often talk about our design and development process as being highly iterative. To iterate, as we all know, means to do something repeatedly. But doing something once, then again, then again, and again, doesn’t singularly ensure that the project is moving in the right direction. It’s the rounds of feedback, sandwiched between iterations, that ultimately dictate the quality of the product.

The thing about feedback is, when given effectively, it is literally the only thing getting you from shitty first draft to shipping a truly quality product.

The first step is asking for help

Before we talk about giving great feedback, it’s important to mention that feedback is made valuable not only by those who give feedback, but by those who seek it as well. Most often, rounds of feedback happen when someone on the team says, “Hey team, look at this thing I’m making. Help me make it better.”

tl;dr download the Windows 10 preview and test the WebRTC getUserMedia samples in the Microsoft Edge browser!

The WebRTC samples that are made available by Google's WebRTC team on GitHub are a tremendously useful resource for starting with WebRTC. They are so useful that this year my favorite answer on the discuss-webrtc mailing list has been "there is a sample for that".

The samples are grouped into three categories:

• getUserMedia samples which show how to use the getUserMedia API to access the microphone and camera,
• RTCPeerConnection samples which demonstrate the use of the RTCPeerConnection API to establish a peer-to-peer connection (usually within a single page), and
• RTCDataChannel samples which demonstrate the higher-level data channel API to send and receive data and files.

A fantastic, but often underused, feature of hapi is the ability to use scopes for authorization.

In many frameworks in order to specify who has access to what resources, you have to perform manual checks within your route handlers. This can be a hassle since often these checks will be performed in many different routes. Sure, we can abstract them into a plugin or middleware, but with hapi we don’t have to since it’s all built right in.

Want to specify a route that only admins can access? It’s as simple as configuring it like this:

server.route({
    method: 'GET',
    path: '/something/adminy',
    config: {
        handler: function (request, reply) {
            return reply('Hello there, admin.');
        },
        auth: {
            scope: 'admin'
        }
    }
})