20th BigBlueButton Developer Conference

Dec 2-6th, 2024 | Berlin

Welcome to the 20th BigBlueButton Developer Conference

Join the BigBlueButton core developers in Berlin from December 2-6, 2024, for five days of hands-on development, collaboration, and teamwork to advance the platform.

We’ll be gathering this year on the Technical University Berlin (TU Berlin) campus (location and room details to be posted soon).

Our summits are designed for collaboration. We welcome experienced developers, UX designers, and instructional technologists (especially those with experience in adapting content for online classes), BigBlueButton administrators, and anyone deeply engaged in the BigBlueButton project to join us in person.

The projects will be based on the upcoming release of BigBlueButton 3.0, which is looking to be our most scalable, capable, and extensible release yet. The extensibility comes from the multi-year work to build a plug-in system for BigBlueButton, enabling developers to extend the platform without modifying the core.

Planned Projects for the Summit

On the first day we will organize into teams and sprint throughout the week. As with each Summit, at end of the five days we’ll make closing presentations with the global BigBlueButton community starting at 13:00 UTC.

Here are sample projects that we expect to be working on:

Enhanced Audio Quality

The core team will explore opportunities for refining audio and video quality by continuing the work to integrate livekit.io into the core of BigBlueButton. The goal is to have it running behind a feature flag in BigBlueButton 3.0 so everyone can test and try out.

Hybrid Teaching

Expanding on last year’s work, we’ll investigate ways to seamlessly integrate BigBlueButton into physical classrooms, enabling students to join polls and discussions through a lightweight client experience on existing in-room video hardware.

Plug-in Architecture

As we move towards BigBlueButton 3.0, we’re accelerating work on a plug-in architecture to extend client functionality. The Plugin SDK has been released, and we’ll be extending BigBlueButton using this capabilities.

User Interface Design

We’ll continue enhancing the BigBlueButton user experience with a more consistent, modular design to improve usability and support plug-in extensions.

Additional topics may include accessibility improvements (e.g., live transcriptions and translations), Matrix integration, H5P integration, and stress testing BigBlueButton 3.0 under heavy load.

Registration is free. Click here to register.

Platinum Sponsors

As an online specialist in education, Didaris, together with over 30 chambers of industry and commerce and a large selection of experienced lecturers, helps ensure that further education is possible for everyone – no matter where in the world you are.

think modular is an Austrian full-service provider with a focus on international settings (learning, networking, conferencing across the globe). A long-time contributor to the BigBlueButton and developer of the BigBlueButton Drupal integration, think modular provides commercial hosting for BigBlueButton in Austria and Germany.

Premium Sponsors

Blindside Networks
Blindside Networks are the creators of BigBlueButton. Blindside Networks provides premium BigBlueButton hosting and services support, which help teachers and students unlock the full potential of BigBlueButton through the customisation of many of the best features of the platform.

Mconf
Mconf is a Brazilian company with over 10 years experience developing video conferencing solutions based on BigBlueButton to meet various needs (see elos.vc, our virtual classroom, and triades.vc, focused on court hearings). Mconf actively contributes to the development and improvement of BigBlueButton and is the company that hosts the BigBlueButton Summits in Brazil.

iMDT
With a rich 20-year history, iMDT has been indirectly involved with BigBlueButton right from the start, as we were actively engaged in the development of the Red5 media server, which formed the foundation of the initial version of BigBlueButton. Since those early days, our commitment to BigBlueButton has only grown stronger. Supported by a partnership with BlindSideNetworks, we work on daily basis to improve BigBlueButton, shaping the future of this remarkable platform.

Apereo
The Apereo Foundation works to increase the awareness and adoption of open source software in and for education. The Foundation supports open source projects used in thousands of colleges and universities worldwide. Our international community of educators, developers, academic institutions, and commercial partners deliver industry-leading open source software serving the academic mission.

ZKI
We thank ZKI, the German association of Higher Education IT centers, for its members that have collectively supported the overall development of BigBlueButton in the past three years. Their contributions have helped us acellerate development of integration with LiveKit and hybrid classroom.

TU Berlin

We especially want to thank our host Technische Universität Berlin for providing us a room and facilities to hold our 20th Developer Summit on campus. We are looking forward to collaboration as well as they are also users of BigBlueButton.

Speaker Session:

How AI and Analytics are Shaping the Future Virtual Classrooms

Presented by: Fred Dixon, Co-founder of BigBlueButton

When: Thursday Nov. 23 at 1:30-2:00pm / Berlin Time (7:30-8:00am EST)
Where: Room TLM18D

As technology continues to advance, Pedagogy – the science of teaching and learning – is even more relevant today. A key measurement of any class, physical or virtual, is “Did students learn?”.

In this presentation, Fred Dixon, co-Founder of BigBlueButton Inc., will explore how AI can assist educators in creating more opportunities for applied learning during their virtual classes, and how related analytics can help educators pin-point students that are struggling and give them feedback in the moment, thereby improving learning outcomes.

This presentation covers three topics:

Framework for evaluating effective use of AI and analytics in the virtual classroom
How BigBlueButton is implementing this framework
Examples of using the framework to judge the effectiveness (or not!) of using AI in teaching virtual classes.

Subscribe to updates on the upcoming BigBlueButton.

About BigBlueButton and Blindside Networks

BigBlueButton is an open source virtual classroom solution for online learning that provides real-time sharing of audio, video, slides, whiteboard, chat and screen. It also allows participants to join the conferences with their webcams and invite guest speakers.

Learn more about the BigBlueButton developed and supported by Blindside Networks.

Blindside Networks started the BigBlueButton project in 2007 and manages its growth world-wide.