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.
As some background context, I processed all of Flock 2016's recordings on YouTube after they were uploaded en masse. All of the talks are documented here:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Flock_2016_Talks
Because of this, I am familiar with some of the successes and challenges that happened, and also followed along with discussions and feedback on social media pages / comments after we published all of the videos. Consequentially, I'd mostly like to request improved recording infrastructure for this year's Flock.
In 2015 and 2016, recording laptops for each room have been used to record the talks. Talks are recorded using Cheese and then the raw recording file is uploaded directly to YouTube. Last year, the OpenQA room's laptop had a faulty microphone, and all talks in that room are without audio. We also lost all of the files for part of Day 1 and all of Day 2 for Picasso (keynote room).
Flock is a valuable opportunity where a large part of the Fedora community gathers together in person to work on key parts of the project. Not only are the discussion topics valuable for attendees to reference back later on after the event, but the talks are also a key opportunity for us to communicate the things we're working outward with a wider audience beyond the contributor community. This was something that was commented on heavily after Flock in our public presences (social media accounts, Telegram community groups, etc.). People noted that many interesting talks weren't recorded or documented (or had audio issues) and also noted that even the recorded ones were difficult to follow because sometimes speakers were off-camera or their slides weren't available with the recording (and the slides were off-camera, so a lot of context was missing).
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.