There's a nonprofit that wants to do several meetings for lectures for about 3000 students. The presenter will show screen or share a document for the most part. At the end students would raise hand and have some discussion, so they will be just viewers for most of meeting

Of course, big corps like teams and google meeting won't Handel this much, not for free at least.

Could I suggest jitsi to them? Can it Handel this much? How much is it going to cost?

As far as I know, Matrix is free, and you can use it through many apps who handle this communication protocol. The most well known is Element

Element mobile client (element x) doesn't even have calls at all

I've just checked, and I saw it has the little camera button for videocalls at the top right of the screen. Unless you're talking about phone calls

Not for groups

I forgot to mention, I have Element Classic on my mobile, not sure about the X one

Maybe Brave Talk? but it's not free for big groups. Although it's cheap: 7 USD/Month. And it doesn't require an account.

I've heard good thing about Jitsi, but I haven't used it outside of matrix calls

lectures for about 3000 students

Could I suggest jitsi to them? Can it Handel this much?

I mean Jitsi is just software. It's just a matter of how much the hardware can handle. Streaming a feed to 3k viewers will require some serious hardware.

I tried suggesting such a thing to the nonprofit I volunteer for and I was lambasted so good luck with that.

Not correct.

Brave Talk is just skinned Jitsi. You can try Mullvad's Jitsi, but good luck with 3k people.

Not much free will handle 3000 people in a video chat. It takes quite a bit of bandwidth and/or processing power to receive, merge, and broadcast 3000 video streams at once.

Do all 3000 really need to participate via video in a conference style system? If not then, why not use a live streaming platform instead of a conferencing system? Many have text chat capabilities, just not video except from the streamer.

If you try to use Matrix for a call with 3000 people you are seriously going to piss off the sysadmin of whatever instance you are on, and those 3000 people are going to end up being permanently banned.

In fact, for 3k people you just can use Youtube Live

vital parts of jitsi are not multi-threaded, so a beefy machine with fast single-thread performance will be needed. but the network and bandwidth requirements will probably be an even bigger obstacle. going off their recommendations, it'd be at least 7.5gbps for 720p to 3000 participants.

ElementX does. But it's glitchy. It won't work for this purpose anyway.

What you need is a streaming platform for the video presentation, supported by a separate interactivity, similar to discord chat or something. Have the presenter supported by someone monitoring the feedback.

You do not need a group video call because there is no possible way to accommodate 3000 speakers. If they are just viewers, then streaming is appropriate. Interactivity can be accomplished through text and document uploads.

There are a huge number of options, depending on what kind of an institution you represent and what kind of commitment and membership students have. I have made bespoke set ups for something like this, and it really does depend on the variables.

You're right 😟