text: One of my staff members is on a board that is having a meeting at the school and and will have 5 physical bodies and 5 people "calling in". This is not a webinar style with "one to many"... but ideally 10 people "in the same room" having a virtual board meeting.
  In the past they have tried Google Hangouts, but have run into issues with some of the remote callers having bad bandwith and losing connection and google switching between everyone.
  He came up with the idea of having each outside caller connect to one inside machine and thereby eliminate the issue of 10 people trying to talk at the same time. So, this would be 5 separate Hangout sessions occurring simultaneously. We're not sure how well the audio would carry but think it would be acceptable. The "inside" people could then communicate any questions or input that their "outside" person might have. It seems, in theory, like this solution might work.
  Anyhow... to the question:
  Has anyone had success in hosting such an event and what software (preferable free) have you used and what settings/tweaks?