On 04/13/2017 02:50 AM, Josh Boyer wrote:
On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 7:58 PM, Justin W. Flory jflory7@gmail.com wrote:
On 04/12/2017 10:18 PM, Máirín Duffy wrote:
- Wifi not sufficient to stream all sessions. Recorded sessions and post
after (except for diversity panel which streamed.) Should make a policy on this probably. (Q: what if we streamed audio-only? Would this save bandwidth?)
This is something I should have probably blogged about too (thanks Mo for pulling all of this feedback together).
I'd like to make a case for this year's Flock to also put extra consideration into planning out how our talks are recorded and documented.
<snip a lot of good description of problems>
I see it as a valuable opportunity for us to invest heavier into improved video infrastructure for this year to both help communicate outward about the things we're doing to a wider (and very interested) audience and to help contributors reflect back on our discussions and topics throughout the year (and be able to follow what's happening from the recordings). And especially seeing how widely the Fedora community is dispersed and how we'll never be able to fund everyone to make it to Flock, wherever we host it, I see it as a valuable investment for our contributors at home who want to follow along remotely as best they can.
Professional video support is very expensive, likely eating most of the additional budget we have allocated towards this year's Flock to record all the sessions that way. That's why the laptop and volunteer setup has been used in the past. We simply don't have budget to do it otherwise.
So what do you propose for solutions otherwise?
josh
I don't think that a professional video team or support is required, but I would like to see us utilize better hardware or usage of resources we do have available. For example, even a microphoned camera on a tripod set up in the middle / side of the room would be a significant improvement in my eyes. Assuming we have a similar number of rooms as last year (near 6), would it be possible to find six cameras, microphones, and tripods in either of the Raleigh or Westford Red Hat offices?
I also think that it could be possible to coordinate volunteers to help assist with camera set-up and recording too. We ask attendees to volunteer for timing reminders / transcriptions, so I don't think it would be much more work to ask for volunteers to start and stop recording a talk too. How to use the cameras / hardware could be a part of the pre-Flock volunteer training session, like we had last year.
The bind would be that at the end, someone or a group of people would have to manually dump the video from the cameras onto a computer before uploading them to YouTube, but I feel like this is something we could hopefully justify the manpower for (the only extra step from previous years is importing from camera to computer).
I would like to emphasize that we don't have to think too big here or spend thousands on a complicated video set-up. But I feel like almost anything would be better than what we have now. If finding the hardware is a concern, I almost feel like you could ask attendees if they would be willing to loan any hardware for the event. It doesn't need to be Hollywood-grade cameras with lapel microphones and switching angles, but the goal should be to better capture the purpose and discussion for every talk / workshop. To me, a camera on a tripod with an external microphone for every room would be a significant improvement.