Virtual Support – a future to embrace but it needs VOIP and commitment!
A very long time ago when Facebook was just a dream in a college student’s mind, online support, shoutboxes and connectivity existed. It is true Facebook has brought people together and enabled them to network, but once you join FB you are immediately being judged, observed, and followed. We are all aware of how often photos from FaceBook appear in the papers, it is the first place the media go now to find out about someone, its addictiveness results in many a lost working hour, and if you have ever tried to contact their admin to have something removed or report a problem it disappears into a hole in time – well that is my experience – others may differ.
The transgender community, many of whom are isolated, have taken to this new world. There are a number of reasons why it is attractive.
1. It is free – this is essential.
2. It enables people to connect up with friends – we all know how tenuous this is, we probably only have 1 or two real friends in life.
3. All the hard work is done for you. You need no technical skills for it to work. So sexist as it may seem, like Twitter, women have taken to it in their droves, and this was the key, as until these systems were available the tech world and the net was mainly dominated by men.
In the past if you wanted to start a community you needed some technical ability. You would need to register a domain, domains are usually taken and they are not free. It took a lot of searching and negotiating to obtain my own name with a dot com (and the .co.uk, you can see it here (currently resting)). I happened to secure it from a lady who had Johnston as a name and purchased it by accident, so I found her and she was generous enough to let it go – if she was a ‘son’ then I’d still be lusting after it 
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Next, you need something to manage the info. For years people used basic HTML and CGI but this was quite difficult to update across large sites – and bandwidth hungry compared to MySQL and PHP. Then ‘Content Management Systems’ (or CMS) were born and developed. Facebook is a CMS with user generated content. CMS are ideal because they are developed by fans and techies for free. The top ones being Drupel, WordPress and Joomla. I have always avoided Joomla as it is a very common and the most often hacked CMS, many a site has seen ‘You’ve been hacked’ by a script kiddie emblazoned across the header leading the webmaster panic and fear. I would always avoid a CMS as a front page of a site simply because if that is hacked then it is all f@cked). Transgenderzone uses a number of independent systems for this reason, if one section ‘goes down’ the rest runs and means less off air time – but many would argue this is more time consuming.
Bulletin Boards are also in this loop with PHPBB leading the pack, PHPBB also now has ‘Friends’ in the user area. It is developing all the time – but just keep it up-to-date 
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Back in the day circa the late 1990s, I helped run the Beaumont Society website, this was very new and to have transgender support live back then in our IRC chatroom (still a brilliant way to chat all these years later) was cutting edge, we sat in every evening awaiting people to log in and share their experiences. This was great, and we had many a good laugh breaking bread with other transgender people, some friendships were forged that remain till this day.
I think that planted a seed in my head, I thought, we need to keep this going, and have tried almost every way to connect with people, and through trial and error ever since, and today we have ended up where we are now.
The Next Step
Long before Facebook people had networks, and shoutboxes, what made FB clever is the way that friends alert friends automatically but this is also its failure for someone in the closet, it so easily outs you as if they look at your friends and they are all gay or all trans then it’s not rocket science to put two and two together. But where it is behind for now is with live TV, and this is now making steps with Google+ Hangouts – Google+ is better than Facebook as a networking tool btw – especially for trans as you can set up different groups others cannot see. But it is still a long way off what we can do right now and using one PC for multiple video feeds, even with Skype premium limits what you can deliver quality wise and how you can deliver it..
Although our preferred system is Skype (maybe register a new account for use with us for even more privacy) why not explore connecting with us via Google+ Hangouts, discuss it in Skype or via pm in the forums with me.
There are a few things that we have learned over the years:
1. People need to have varying levels of privacy – THEY control.
2. People need to be able to connect with what they have available without going out and having to spend – many transpeople are on low incomes and for those who are isolated perhaps the only way they can meet friends..
3. People need to be ‘managed’ so there needs to be supervision to prevent abuse and ensure a happy group. It also requires an engineer to ‘work the board’.
4. People need to be able to feel safe, and this means keeping things ‘closed circuit’ as much as possible. This may also mean people being allowed to settle in and get a feel for things before they get to chatting, it also means being able to use fake IDs, and audio only.
The more levels we add the more and more difficult it becomes to tailor a virtual group to suit everyone.
But I think we have done it.
How do we do it?
A few years ago the now very well known broadcaster Leo Laporte (twit.tv) changed the way internet television/podcasting/vodcasting worked forever, he developed a way that enabled him to have a virtual tv show on a consumer budget, this has now moved to a larger purpose built studio called the ‘twit brickhouse’, but before he did that he managed perfectly well on the same system we now use.
Here is a video of his old ‘twit cottage’ and the new studio move. We have something a kin to twit cottage, we can do a virtual tv show but we can also keep it private and /or stream video live and record it – should we want to. But our group sessions remain private. Watch this video in the first few minutes and see how we compare.
For a some tips on how improve your quality click here – if you are a techie and want to know what we use (based on Leo’s original set up), then click here and visit our tech page.
I have used Leo as inspiration and that is obvious. If you are going to do this sort of thing then only use the best tried and tested methods, there is a term ‘skype-a-saurus‘ for what he originally did. This can be tweaked a little to be done even cheaper – I have used a lot of gear I had from my music making days and cheaper ‘square monitors’ and Intel atom pcs, but the effect is the same. It is based on VoIP (Skype, Google+ etc in our case), and it allows people to connect to a ‘hub’ where video or audio is mixed and re-sent to everyone else. It creates a virtual closed circuit TV show, and allows us to not only play in media to one another, show photos etc, but also visit and display webpages to everyone else in the group. As tzone has a huge media archive then this made sense – as this is private.
This is the future right now! Skype and Google+ are free, most PCs and Macs have webcams and mics, (but of course a headset and a good webcam is always better) for some advice on that and how to light cheaply click here.
How does it work?
You add us to your contacts list and then call when we run the group, as this is subject to change check our media page for more on when and how here and this will lead you to here.
You only have to call, you can use a fake ID or your avatar name that you may already use in the forums, and you do not have to send us video, although it is nicer, we will send you ours.
Setbacks?
There are only a few problems that can occur:
The biggest setback is our ability to handle large numbers, there are a few ideas we have considered to deal with this. One is to move people onto Google+ then we have two video editors, this has been tested. But if we pass 12 people on video, then it maybe necessary to ask some who are sending video to return to audio, and we would then stream the video to a password protected live video stream here, but not send audio to it, those in the group can only hear audio because they are in the group. So double levels of privacy. But this would not happen without the group negotiating it first. Of course when we first start a lot of people are calling in so it needs a little time to get everybody settled. More do call during the time but it is usually a seamless thing. Don’t be disheartened if you cannot get in – pm me and we can discuss it for next time .
1. People can have terrible audio gear, we can tolerate bad video (should they want to send it) but bad audio, hissy or sounding like a earthquake can be a problem – so avoid vacuuming and turn the washing machine off at least . We will do our best to help our end, but more often than not we simply ask that you ‘click to speak’, in other words, unless you are speaking mute your mic by clicking the icon on the screen. Just remember to turn it back on again if you speak . We can usually see if someone is speaking and nothing is coming out, but this is not possible if you do not send video, so please be aware of that.
2. Network status, we are all at the mercy of our ISPs and it is true from time to time the group has just all disconnected and have had to wait 5mins to call back. This is beyond our control and often made worse because the time we do this is the ‘best’ time as there is less traffic for engineers to operate.
3. Host unavailable, the hub is managed by a host, no host no hub, no show We will place information on the forums and in the media section by virtue of a pop-up one time warning, and in the ‘Skype friends Newsletter’ – to subscribe visit this page and add your details on the right. The Host can be ill, or have other things in ‘real life’ (rl), so sadly this would apply to any group meeting in a church hall or a community center if they have the ‘key’.
But you know that is a small price to pay to sit in a virtual group and discuss life’s issues, share in a non-judgmental way, have some laughs and make friends.
Our testimonials speak for themselves. http://media.transgenderzone.com/?p=1252 and yes we have FTMs too who are regulars!
Conclusion
You know all those years ago when we sat in the Beaumont Society Chat Rooms moderating, we often had these fantasies about what if we could ‘physically’ be in a virtual place, then ‘Second Life’ came along and proved this were possible. Then we thought what if we had a virtual group but with the actual people, all connected up with the ability to chat and even be seen, Face Book, Myspace (remember them? LOL) and Youtube showed us that. But then we thought what if we could do all this but privately using free systems, and yet be able to bring in media and live websites but without phone charges, right there into the show?
Well we have(!) and although we were not exactly the first, it is now for everyone else to catch-up again .
You can find out more about our group and even join in here. http://www.transgenderzone.tv/
If you want to comment feel free to join the forums and click here or here.
