[Matsu]

Hi everyone. I'm hoping some of the smart cookies around here know a little bit about VOIP technology. I want to set up something a little unique: A small scale VOIP dialer to call 150-300 homes per evening and arrange virtual community meetings on a very small scale. Assuming 5%-10% acceptance, the goal is to get as few as 5-25 people on the line at a time and have a real conversation with them about local issues.

I have some familiarity with the science/art of holding the conversation itself, and the marketplace for phone lists and addressees, writing scripts for this sort of thing, etc... What I need to know if whether there's a practical solution to bring this all in house and administer it from my desktop? There are a lot of companies out there that provide the service on a completed/connected call basis, but that's too grand and too expensive for what I'm planning.

Ideally, I would own a software/hardware package that lets a lone individual (me) or a small team act as operators - simply to place people on the call. I don't need a lot of screening because the goal is to have a real conversation and then follow-up with specific responses to the concerns expressed by callers rather than canned messages.

A clue as to what I'm up to. I used to work in the business of electioneering. Something I absolutely hate about it is the degree to which messages have been "disciplined". Most western democracies rely too heavily on donations. A multitude of factors feed this. The typical election period is too short. The typical media channels are too costly. These conspire to make it absolutely necessary to condense messages down to near meaninglessness and to broadcast broadcast broadcast. No one listens. It may be stupidly naive, but I'm a serial idealist. I want to try something different.