WebRT… what?!? Our first encounters
The first time we experienced WebRTC was in December 2013 and happened more or less by coincidence. Rianne Goijarts, Alex Bischop and Bart Uelen attended the WebRTC 2013 : The First Real-World Deployments in Paris. There we met Luis and Philippe from Apidaze and our co-operation was born between WebRTC Nederland and Apidaze.
Amsterdam WebRTC Meetup
We were very excited about the possibilities of this new technology. So back in The Netherlands we joined forces and established the website www.webrtc-nederland.nl. To create a local Dutch eco-system we organized, with the help of Apidaze, our first WebRTC Meetup in Amsterdam on March 26th.
Rianne did a very succesfull job on the social media side to promote WebRTC and our local initiative. At this first meetup a handfull of dedicated speakers presented their experiences with WebRTC and showed their results.
Bart introduced the technology to the audience by running some small GetUserMedia examples. Alex held a market re-cap and gave an overview of some of the WEBRTC players in the field. Apidaze presented their newly launched video conference possibilities. The 30 attendees proved that in The Netherlands the WebRTC eco-system is growing.
Going international
On May 4 at the WebRTC Meetup in Berlin initiated by Luis from Apidaze, Bart Uelen presented the use of a call button on your webpage. In this demo we used WebRTC functionality and the Apidaze telecom API’s to connect to the telephony world.
During the month of May we ran into Joris Swinnen from Gent, Belgium. This started our international crossing border WebRTC Meetup. From his interest in social responsibilities and education, Joris developed in November 2013 a WebRTC based e-learning video application and is extensively testing prototypes in a customer discovery. WebRTC Meetups were organized in Gent & Brussels.
Winning at TADHack Madrid
Joris already planned to attend the TADHack Madrid in June. To re-enforce our collaboration, we decided to create a demo. The purpose of this demo was to invite colleagues for a video chat by giving them a phone call or sending them a SMS from a webpage using the Apidaze API and WebRTC.
Joris presented this simple showcase for inviting colleagues for a videoconference using Apidaze telecom API and video conference services. We were fortunate to win the Apidaze TADHack prize, you can see our pitch below.
More Meetups
On the 2nd of July we organized together with our host TNO in Delft, The Netherlands a second and succesfull WebRTC Meetup. Some 30 people attended.
- More Meetups are planned and will be announced at http://www.meetup.com/Amsterdam-WebRTC-Meetup/
- With others planned in Antwerp, London, Dublin, etc. http://www.meetup.com/WebRTC-crossingborders/
So get involved and join a WebRTC Meetup. Or, even better, get in touch and start your own local WebRTC meetup. We are here to help!
Our team
Joris Swinnen Innopreneur at www.o10tct.org, bringing effective communication & interactive assessment of contextual data into practice
Rianne Goijarts Front-end developer and multi-media expert at www.goija.com
Alex Bisschop Business Development at Motivid
Bart Uelen Business and ICT consultant at www.bijouconsulting.com.