Why Speak Up?

I am a tech enthusiast and I love to attend lot of meetups, conferences, events etc. The reason I attend them is

• to get introduced to new technologies
• hear perspectives of people on technologies known to me

Conference hall setup:

Usually be a sparsely distributed clusters of people sitting relaxedly all over.

Some of the talks I attended will be so immersive and I couldn’t afford having even a slighter distraction fearing I would loose context. Now someone from the crowd asked a question which is just audible to the speaker and got a response which none of the participants could hear except the first row to which speaker could see them nodding their heads. Worst part is, the speaker couldn’t even realize that the question nor the answer is heard to everyone and moves on. And even worser, speaker might remember something from the question and started speaking about it there of. I lost track of what is happening and my interest completely dissolved.

Auditorium Kind of setup:

A large number of people trying to understand a guest lecture.

This kind of setup usually works when large number of people are interested in one particular technology and the speaker has no other way except to stand on a dais and present. This kind of setup is a biggest hurdle for having interactive conversations. People sitting in the front rows might usually get chance to converse and often not audible to rest of the auditorium. Even consciously if the speaker would want to repeat the question and answer in the microphone is too tedious for him/her.

Noisy environment:

Small room with external noises from AC, traffic etc.

Conversations gets screwed up even if it is a small room with everyone sitting around when there are unavoidable external noises like from the AC or coffee machine or honking from the road nearby.

In all of the above cases, having a good audio system setup and a proper pocket microphone to the speaker wouldn’t really help much to have an effective conversation between participants and speaker and get everyone heard with clarity.

🎤 The runners and the microphone bearers 🎤

Oh yes, I forgot!! I see lot of volunteers running around with limited set of wireless microphones to the participants running, stumbling, leaning over other participants. They try to do lot of coordinated effort to bridge the gap between conversations and audience. Most of the times they are ignored just for the reason that they are too far from you or not looking at you at the moment you had a question.

Much subtle and often neglected concern:

As an individual, if my voice is low by nature. I see the difficulty in shouting out my question or comment loud with clarity. And sometimes people sitting closer to me would have to repeat and I really hate that part. For a conversation to flow, you shouldn’t struggle conversing.

There comes SpeakUp!!

Its a web application that you can open from your mobile web browser, sign up as participant and talk. Your voice will be instantly streamed across the very audio system speaker was using and you can avail your freedom of speech with a tap.

All you need is to download the package from https://speakup.gq site on your laptop and publish its IP address to the participants. This application works on a wifi network available at the event venue, to which all the participants are connected. It doesn’t need internet to work but a network to use.

Quick question, How is speakUp different from traditional VOIP services?

Speak up is not a generic voice calling software for the internet, it is built to solve a specific problem with a grand assumption of everyone being on the same wifi network. low latency voice streaming and self hosted. moderator control(Simple interface to control participant voices). Runs in browser without any extensions. built especially for meetings, conferences, meetups etc with a wifi network for participants. open source and ease to use.

It is completely open source and open to contributions.