[Video] importance of conference recording

[Carl Karsten]

On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 9:45 AM, Paul Wayper <paulway at mabula.net> wrote:
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> On 06/19/2013 07:34 PM, Carl Karsten wrote:
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>> I have successfully dealt with it.  For PyCon US (now NA) I discourage
>> anyone from volunteering to help me if they are not going to do it full
>> time.  This means I have to work harder to find people, but that work is
>> done before the event so it is a better use of my time.  In the end, same
>> amount of work, but better results.
>
> Interesting.  My attitude at LCA was: I told the volunteer coordinator what
> I wanted, and I got it.  He coordinated all the shift changes, made sure we
> had two people in each room, made sure they had a bit of training
> beforehand, and fixed problems when they occurred.  I didn't have to
> organise volunteers at all.  This worked for me fine :-)
>
> You can do it your way, Carl, no problem.  But I think there are other ways :-)

There are other ways, but some are arguably better than others.   And
the parameters aren't always equal, so this is all very dynamic.

Your "worked fine" doesn't sound fine to me.  The work of coordinated,
trained, fixed problems got moved to a different person, but still
occurred during the conference.   To me conference time is way more
'expensive' than per-conference time.   this is subjective.

Also I think dedicated people will do better work than part timers, so
the results of 200 man hours will be better.  They are better fits for
the job coming into the show, and then accumulate more experience
during the show.  It is possible they get burned out and fall over,
but that can be managed. Maybe even by shoring up the schedule with
some part timers ;)

>
>> Another angle on this problem is trying to figure out much of the over
>> all conference resources should be allocated to Video Recording.   And
>> really it goes beyond the conference budget - There is a large resources
>> pool that multiple events draw from.  It is not a well defined or
>> documented pool, but it exists.  If an event draws from the pool, it
>> reduces what is left for other events.  If 5 events all do their own
>> Recording project, it drains more than if the same team does all 5
>> events.
>
> I'm not sure whether you are using 'resources' to mean 'people' or
> 'equipment' here.

All of it.. and add sponsor money, and attendee registration fees.
This resource pool is very finite.  If the number of events doubled,
they would all suffer from lack of resources.   As much as the
sponsors would like to double their exposure and whatever the reasons
are they write large checks, they are all constrained by budgets.
People's time is also limited.  There are some number of people that
can afford to spend some amount of time helping one or more
conferences.   More events will allow more people to help due to
physical location and people's schedules, but my observations suggest
the events are close to saturating the pool.


>  Certainly, conferences use both people and equipment, and
> both have to be in one place at one time.  Even having two conferences
> straight after eachother - not overlapping - can cause problems, as I think
> LCA 2012 found with DrupalCon happening just before it.
>

I was talking about events spread out over time.    They all draw from
this finite pool and the pool can't support too much slop.  So we need
to make good use of the pool.  4 events that all try to do video
independently are going to draw more than 1 group that does all 4.

One thing I keep hearing is: independent groups will result in more
people and innovation (new software and process)
1. possible, but not assured, and I see evidence of the opposite.
  1a. What I see is people come in, fail, go away frustrated and never
return.  0 gain.
  1b.  2 of my regulars have just said "as long as we are going to be
doing this all the time, we are going to put some effort into being
familiar with everything."    greater than 0 gain.

2. the software and processes changes are next to useless. except for
the patch that hooked DVswitch to audio out, which never got
submitted.

3. assuming we did get more people/innovation, is it really what we
should be spending the limited resources on?    example, take LCA,
PyCon.AU, Drupal and OSDC.  Different people have worked those.
Assuming there is evidence that letting different groups doing it has
resulted in a contribution, is it worth the additional cost to the
pool, and is it worth risking actually producing quality video?

> People can be trained.

Yes.

But that does not mean there will be people,
and when there are people it doesn't mean they will get trained.
and it does not mean a trained person will show up at a 2nd event.
and people have a habit of ignoring the training and doing their own thing.

We should break this into 2 groups: management and operators.

Operators - I have grabbed people out of the audience, given them 3
minutes of DVswtich training and they did OK.  I have also had them do
OK for the first 10 minutes, then just left the VGA source up for the
remaining 20 minutes.  Not great, but not catastrophic.

Managers - The people who start working months before the show to
figure out what equipment is needed, who/how it will arrive and be
deployed, what procedures and software will be used.

The Manager group I think we should nurture.  (Yes, this is self
serving.)  10 years ago the CPU power, disk space, apps, procedures,
etc didn't really exist.  There was no evidence of "here is what
works."   I credit the Debian Video team for coming up with a way that
works.  I copied it for PyCon (including flying in 3 of the crew, like
Ryan) , and it worked.  I am all for evolving it - I have added plenty
of features.

I am against someone come up with a new way, or even trying to copy it
on their own.  That drains the pool and risks videos not getting made.

>> I also think it is worth discussing what the goals of the effort is
>> anyway.  5 years ago I felt it was a good idea to spend my time trying to
>> build a community of people who would mange recording events.  I am happy
>> to talk to people about it and help them, but I no longer encourage
>> anyone "go do video for your show, I will be on line to help you
>> remotely."    Now I encourage them to get one of us that has done it
>> before to be in charge of video at that show, and the person in question
>> can consider doing it themselves next year.   Most of the time they ask
>> me back next year.
>
> Sure.  Many people asked me "why didn't you just get a company to record
> video at LCA?" - from my partner to people who've been organising
> conferences for years.  I've talked about some of my reasons over the last
> several days.

It felt like you were lumping Ryan and I aka NextDay into the company
argument.  Not sure it matters, all companies are going to be
different, but some of your points didn't apply to us at all.

>
> But I am intrigued as to why you have moved away from helping people and
> instead want to do it yourself?

That's not a question :)

> Do you think others can't do it as well as
> you can?

Correct.  I have way more experience, in most cases by a factor of 100.

> Are you sick of seeing people stuff it up?

Yes.  I suspect there is more to your question though.

> Do you hate being
> brought in at the last minute to fix things?

That has only happened once.

> I can understand all of those
> motives, so I'm interested in yours :-)

You missed my main concern, which I addressed above, but in this context:

I only have so much time and energy.  5 years ago my vision was to get
people doing what I was doing, including telling others, and by now
there would be 100's that could do video for a show. I have shipped
equipment to other people to use.  I have flown to do video at a 2 day
iPhone developers conference (so a 4 day trip)  with the sole purpose
of exposing people to how I do video.  I have IRCed with a guy who
used DVswitch/Veyepar to do a 4 hour per month event for 6 months.  I
have stood up at Java user group meetings saying "I won't be here next
month, I would be happy to help someone do it."  I have 0 interest in
iPhone or Java videos - it was 100% to recruit people.   Result of my
efforts 0.0 people.


Not sure where this fits in above, so I'll just tack this on here:
The people pool does include a set of people who are willing to donate
their time and money to one show, but then they have to get back to
their day job and family.  I can see the draw of trying to make use of
this donation over something that would cost.

I still don't know what the value of the average video is either
relative to say giving all attendees a conference shirt or 2, or
holding a workshop that introduces kids to Python, or certainly simple
money.  I have looked at the number of views of python videos I have
done and concluded the cost is around 20 cents each (this is only
counting full views, so I assume the person got something out of it.)
So I am 100% sure that the money spent on producing those video was a
good investment.  I am also sure that reducing the amount spent on the
same number of videos will result in less views such that the cost per
view goes up.  We are now in funny money land, because when someone
watches a video, 20 cents does not move between any accounts or is
even logged.  But it does help me evaluate options.


Whew.. this post is too long.  I hope someone reads it all...

One more thing... A video has 0 value if no one watches it.    The
more people that watch it (assuming they get something out of it) the
more value.  In an effort to increase views (and real views, not just
click counts) I started emailing the video URL to the presenter
encouraging them to .. well... spam their social network.  it took
some up front investment of my time to add that to veyepar, and a
reoccurring bit of time to do it for each show (I now get 100's of
emails, most are just "thanks!" but it takes time to click though them
looking for "Oh, my name is spelled wrong" which I wold get anyway..)
But I feel really good about it because I am 100% sure it will
increase the value of the videos by more people watching them because
the presenters spam will target a very appropriate audience.

2 points here:
1. The time spent on this draws from the resource pool.  my time, the
show organizers need to get me the email addresses, and every single
presenter now gets 1 more bit of email.   It is an example of what I
consider a good use of the pool.

2. it is something I did because I knew I wold use it over and over as
I do more shows.  It is an example of innovation happening when the
same person does lots of shows.

OK, I need to get some work done.  like hammer a show organizer to
point a DNS entry at http://videos.writethedocs.org

-- 
Carl K