Good afternoon,

Is there a software/program that allows for several individuals
to participate in an online meeting?  When we have our Alabama
PAS meetings, we'd like very much to have those individuals
who live a great distance from the meeting participate.  Is
Skype capable of that?  Another?  Also, we cannot afford something
that is costly.  And a factor to keep in mind is that we might
need to have the participants install the software/program
on their respective computers.  Maybe setting up a chat room
would work as well?  Something like Skype provides for
greater and faster feedback and does not require typing. 
Any advice you folks would offer is much, much appreciated.

Take care,
Neal

 

Skype would be my choice, since it's well known, reliable, and supports what you would want to do.

You could send file through that if you needed to as well.

Another neat thing you might want to check out, if you wanted to give everyone access to a common whiteboard is this: http://www.imaginationcubed.com/  That's a little gem that a friend shared with me a few years ago.

Though I haven't played with it much, and it's still in beta, [url=https://wave.google.com/wave/]Google Wave[/url] was built specifically for this kind of stuff. But everyone will need a google account and you have to be invited into the preview.

Off the top of my head, I thought Apple's iChat was capable of hosting up to four video chats simultaneously since Leopard. I haven't used it like that before, so I may be wrong. But it may be another free option to look into as long as everyone's on a Leopard (or greater) Mac.