Offline Version
Julia Castro
This would be super helpful. Our internet struggles - having everything downloaded to an app would be awesome
Brandon Kanerva
Yeah, so this has been my biggest fear. It's not that I have bad internet speeds (we actually have really good ones and often have to utilize video formats online like RightNow Media. However, we have had many weeks when the internet just has gone down at the church. And often this happens right before service. So having a mac application (and windows) would be definitely appreciated)
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Tim Ritter
I agree with several who stated about both unreliable internet (either in a location or sometimes with other events just a severe bandwidth limitation or other network congestion) and about offsite locations with no or limited internet. Being able to hotspot into legacy sidekick sign in, and then not need a connection has been key to a number of presentations. Bottom line is that anything that depends on an internet connection to run the full app is not a serious enough app to rely on for a full length presentation. If some features (e.g. live voting or an embedded internet video) were unavailable in part of a presentation because of tech issues then that is something that can be dealt with without ruining the presentation. Losing the whole thing because there is no 'run local' option is not good in general practice for any group setting. Having a 'web app' version for PC and Mac that runs the new sidekick in an embedded browser app, but that also has an actual cloud sync feature that can bring the whole presentation down to a local drive to run makes far more sense and can run more efficiently and smoothly than inside a standard browser that may have a bunch of add-ons and extensions running in the background.
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Justin Schultz
Yea, this is a big one for me. I don’t currently have wifi in our youth space so it would be great to have!
Andrew Hartman
Brady Ebert Thanks for this? How often do you experience issues with slow internet (weekly, monthly, quarterly)? And can you define "slow" in terms of MPS (you can test https://www.google.com/search?q=speed+test)?
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Todd Handell
Andrew Hartman: I had already posted this in the slack and these are my speeds. 8.16 mpbs download speed, 7.27 upload mpbs. For me its not necessarily slow, just unreliable, ours cuts out too often. usually not for long, just outta no where. Particularly on sunday mornings when a lot of our members are connected to the same wifi.
The other BIGGEST need for me with offline would be retreats! So many camps / retreat centers in our area don't have internet or even have service if they are in the mountains! So having the option to have it offline would be HUGE!
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Phil Woodman
Todd Handell: Yes. Same issues. Students meet in a barn that can have plenty of speed most of the time, but will cut out randomly for 2 minutes or an hour. And retreat space speeds are always questionable.
Jordan Baker
Todd Handell: Agreed. The two most recent retreat centers we used did not have reliable internet at all. Being able to save an offline version would be huge. I'm guessing we could build the service online and then just leave the window up on a laptop, but that is a sketchy proposition to leave an entire retreat hanging on the tab not getting closed accidentally.
Brady Ebert
Andrew Hartman: we're capped out at 26 and have all the teens on the same wifi. Not consistent enough to depend on a program that is internet dependent
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Justin Schultz
Andrew Hartman: For me I use Sidekick in two different contexts. My youth group setting is unreliable internet (weekly), and my drop in program has reliable internet (weekly).
Brandon Kanerva
Andrew Hartman for me it's not so much "slow" internet, but sometimes internet completely crashing and not coming back up. It's more of an unreliable internet.