A Glimpse at the Infamous Spreadsheet

If you have been watching Desert Bus for Hope the last couple of years, you might have noticed how fast videos go up on Youtube. If you thought that there were little internet elves working away to get you the third “Africa” rendition that you missed, you’re not all wrong. The Video Strike Team, or VST, is a group of off site volunteers that work diligently throughout the run to keep a record of what events have happened, grab the video footage, and upload and edit the video for everyone’s viewing pleasure.

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This year Desert Bus is changing our chat system. Instead of running our own IRC server, we will be using Twitch‘s larger and more stable chat network.

What does this mean for you?

• to participate in the chat you will need to register a Twitch account (reading the chat without participating will not require an account).
• If you wish to bid on live auctions, you must attach your Twitch account to your Desert Bus account so that BidBot can verify your bids as valid. To do this:
  1. Log in to your Desert Bus donor account
  2. Go to your Profile page
  3. Click the button to add your Twitch account.

  Otherwise, bidding works exactly the same as last year.

For those of you that prefer web chat over an IRC client, we will be using Twitch’s embedded chat on our site.

For those of you that prefer IRC clients over web chat, you can find instructions for connecting to Twitch’s chat here.

Subscriptions will NOT be required for anything.

We think this is a good move because:

• Twitch has a larger chat network which can handle load and attacks better than we can and should be more stable
• Twitch’s embedded web chat is more user-friendly
• Twitch can provide better access to the chat on mobile platforms
• We can utilize their team of engineers to help fix problems as they occur

As with any new venture, we understand that there may be some challenges, however, we feel that the benefits of the additional stability and ease of access that Twitch’s chat offers outweighs the risks. We will do everything we can to keep the Desert Bus chat that we all know and love running as smoothly as possible; it’s full of some of the most creative, inventive, and ridiculously silly people we know.

Desert Bus chat is the best chat, no matter who hosts it.