Flock 2014

[Tom Callaway]

I've started making a wiki page with notes for Flock 2014. Yes, a lot of
stuff is missing, but we need to start! I visited Prague this week and
saw the venue (it is awesome). This will be a great event, but it will
also be a lot of work. Here are some initial content notes:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Flock_2014

Related stuff that is already in flight:
* Restarting the registration process (spot, luke)
* Researching AV options for recording/streaming talks (Miro)
* Sponsorship forms (Ruth)
* Researching catering options with the University (Miro)

We should probably have an IRC meeting in the near term with staff and
interested community members to revisit the post-mortem from last year
and start identifying additional action items.

~tom

==
¸.·´¯`·.´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸><(((º> OSAS @ Red Hat
University Outreach || Fedora Special Projects || Fedora Legal

[Gianluca Sforna]

On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Tom Callaway  wrote:
> Researching AV options for recording/streaming talks (Miro)

I think PyCon US used http://nextdayvideo.com/ at least a couple years
with good results.

[Tim Flink]

On Tue, 4 Feb 2014 19:22:20 +0100
Gianluca Sforna  wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Tom Callaway 
> wrote:
> > Researching AV options for recording/streaming talks (Miro)
>
> I think PyCon US used http://nextdayvideo.com/ at least a couple years
> with good results.

Yeah, nextdayvideo has done the last several PyCon US events and I
agree that their output is great.

I suspect that the issue for Flock would be cost. I spent a bit of time
talking to Carl (the owner of nextdayvideo) about how they've run the AV
systems at the last 2 pycons and it's far from a simple operation. I
believe that they do offer reduced pricing if we can supply enough
volunteers but I also suspect that the cost of that reduced pricing
would still be outside what the Flock budget could allow.

I'll skip most of the details since I think that most folks aren't
interested but from my experience, there are many options for recording
and/or broadcasting talks. The possible output would depend on several
factors:

1. Available Hardware
    For this case, stuff that could be used without incurring extra
    costs. By hardware, I mean: cameras, tripods, mixers, cables,
    microphones, capture devices, computers for mixing/recording, disks
    for storage during Flock and other components that we'd need to pull
    off the level of recording/broadcast desired.

2. People at Flock
    The best output comes from having a dedicated and trained person at
    the talk to monitor and adjust the recording in real time. There is
    only so much which can be changed in post and fixing stuff at
    record time is generally orders of magnitude easier and less
    complicated (assuming that a good fix is even possible in post) than
    attempting to fix it later.

3. People to Coordinate/Work before Flock
    Even using commercial equipment, there isn't really an
    out-of-the-box conference recording/broadcast setup that I'm aware
    of. Putting the room kits together, making sure everything works,
    preparing any software components, testing the overall setup etc.
    would be needed before Flock to make sure everything works at flock.

4. Venue Bandwidth
    Assuming that we want to broadcast in near real-time, we'd need to
    verify that the venue both has the available bandwidth and is
    willing to allow us to consume that bandwidth.

5. Tolerance of non-free-as-in-speech components
    In my experience, the easiest and cheapest setups involve some level
    of non-free-as-in-speech components. This could be youtube/hangouts,
    broadcast codecs, capture devices etc.

6. Budget
    Equipment purchase/rental, possible broadcast setup, shipping etc.

I've spent far more time with video in general, researching solutions
for talk recording/broadcast and recording talks than I'd really care to
admit and I'm more than happy to share what I've learned, help and make
what little equipment I have available.

Tim

[Miro Hrončok]

Well, to answer it all:

There's local university AV group. They have hardware, experience and 
stuff. Bandwidth is not problem. I'm talking to them and will post 
results soon.

[Kashyap Chamarthy]

On Tue, Feb 04, 2014 at 12:19:44PM -0500, Tom Callaway wrote:
> I've started making a wiki page with notes for Flock 2014. Yes, a lot of
> stuff is missing, but we need to start! I visited Prague this week and
> saw the venue (it is awesome). This will be a great event, but it will
> also be a lot of work. Here are some initial content notes:
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Flock_2014
>
> Related stuff that is already in flight:
> Restarting the registration process (spot, luke)
> Researching AV options for recording/streaming talks (Miro)

Half-baked thought:

Is it reasonable to have etherpads where notes/things to-do can be
captured in a light-weight, collaborative manner, save revisions,
collate summary/details/questions. Email (or central archive) the
formatted plain text to relevant mailing lists for permanant
archives/further action.

FWIW, I (and other remote participants) found it useful at other
technical conferences (KVMForum, Linux Plumbers, OpenStack summit -- /me
participated remotely here). During Flock2013, for an OpenStack RDO
test-event[1] that I conducted participants found it helpful.

[1] https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/flock2013

[Jaroslav Reznik]

----- Original Message -----
> I've started making a wiki page with notes for Flock 2014. Yes, a lot of
> stuff is missing, but we need to start! I visited Prague this week and
> saw the venue (it is awesome). This will be a great event, but it will
> also be a lot of work. Here are some initial content notes:
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Flock_2014
>
> Related stuff that is already in flight:
> Restarting the registration process (spot, luke)
> Researching AV options for recording/streaming talks (Miro)

Or ask FOSDEM video team. I talked to one FOSDEM stuff guys and they
have very nice setup. They rent cameras but they have own design
frame grabbers and streaming HW they offer to other events.
> Sponsorship forms (Ruth)
> Researching catering options with the University (Miro)
>
> We should probably have an IRC meeting in the near term with staff and
> interested community members to revisit the post-mortem from last year
> and start identifying additional action items.

I'm definitely willing to help, can't promise how much as I'm member
of Akademy org team, that's happening month later...

Jaroslav
> ~tom
>
> ==
> ¸.·´¯`·.´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸><(((º> OSAS @ Red Hat
> University Outreach || Fedora Special Projects || Fedora Legal
> _______________________________________________
> flock-planning mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/flock-planning

[Jiri Eischmann]

Tom Callaway píše v Út 04. 02. 2014 v 12:19 -0500:
> I've started making a wiki page with notes for Flock 2014. Yes, a lot of
> stuff is missing, but we need to start! I visited Prague this week and
> saw the venue (it is awesome). This will be a great event, but it will
> also be a lot of work. Here are some initial content notes:
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Flock_2014
>
> Related stuff that is already in flight:
> Restarting the registration process (spot, luke)
> Researching AV options for recording/streaming talks (Miro)
> Sponsorship forms (Ruth)
> Researching catering options with the University (Miro)
>
> We should probably have an IRC meeting in the near term with staff and
> interested community members to revisit the post-mortem from last year
> and start identifying additional action items.
>
> ~tom

Hi,
I'm willing to help, too. I can arrange production of any kind of swag
locally.
You can also count on my two interns - Květa Mrštíková and Vojtěch
Trefný, especially Vojtěch who resides in Prague will be a big help to
Miro.

Jiri