Leo Lapworth comments in "For speakers at Perl conferences" that you should record your own talks at conferences, because organisers cannot be trusted to release the videos they take of you.
I wholeheartedly agree. I've spoken at numerous conferences, including several large ones, and only in about 10-20% of cases have the videos of me EVER appeared.
I'm amazed that conference organisers can put in so much effort into recording (dozens of tapes, multiple cameras, multiple operators) and then never produce anything as a result.
The only time I'm aware of that a full talk of mine has appeared online was at a Linux.conf.au, who had a dedicated video team of eight people.
Where is all this footage, and why does it never get processed? Why even bother recording it? If you don't have time, send me the raw tape of my own talk and I will do it myself if needed.
YAPC::NA? You listening?
I'm also surprised (and disappointed) that videos are taken at nearly all of the Perl conferences I attend, but never seem to see the light of day. Like the article this post refers to, I've started to look for ways to record my presentations myself.
My first attempt at OSCON didn't work out so well, I'll be trying again at YAPC::EU. And I do wish that anyone who is holding video footage of me from previous conferences would at least make the raw video available to me.
In fact, I think I may write this as a clause to the "video release" forms they always have us sign -- "if you fail to make the video available to me within 30 days, I will publicly humiliate you" or something like that. (Yes, I'm looking at *you*, YAPC::NA and YAPC::EU!)
Thanks for the post.
Pm
Re:Hear, hear!
ChrisDolan on 2010-07-26T02:44:37
As the volunteer who spent many hundreds of hours (and accidentally many thousands of dollars on bandwidth fees) I take GREAT offense at your suggestion of public humiliation. Perhaps I should insist on a similar clause if I submit a patch to Rakudo?
http://yapcna2006.equilibrious.net/2006-06-28.PatrickRMichaud/
http://yapcna2006.equilibrious.net/2006-06-28.PatrickRMichaud_Part2/
Re:Hear, hear!
pmichaud on 2010-07-26T04:04:39
Chris-
Offense noted, none was truly intended, but please accept my apologies. My "public humiliation" was meant to be more tongue-in-cheek and humorous than it came across (my fault entirely). Beyond that, since you _did_ make some videos available, my comment should not be taken as directed at you, and I truly appreciate the care that was taken in preparing the YAPC::NA 2006 videos. I had seen them long before now, and was impressed at the care and quality of editing that went into them. A belated thank-you for your work (I did not know until now who was responsible for them).
It's all of the other videos that I regret not being able to see or (more importantly to me) share with my wife who is unable to attend the conferences). Since YAPC::NA 2006 I've given quite a lot of video-recorded talks at YAPC events, and except for one instance in Columbus where I cornered the videographer on the same day of the talk, I have absolutely no video to show from them.
I agree that putting together a conference is a ton of work, and generally underappreciated. I mainly wish that the people holding the raw video footage could/would distribute the load to others of us who are willing to take on some of the time/expense to have them available. I'm not asking them to pay to host/edit the videos, I would just like to somehow get better access to parts of the video vault.
As for ridicule about Rakudo's patch process, I'm not certain the analogy is entirely a fair one. The patches _are_ publicly available, so others can still make use of them even if they're not immediately incorporated into the official repository right away. (Exchanging patches is a time-honored tradition in free software.) Moreover, we _are_ constantly processing and applying many of the patches we receive, so it's clear that patches are being processed, even if a particular patch may be warnocked for an extended period of time. Also, afaik I think that queries about specific patch submissions usually receive a very quick response of some sort explaining the delay.
It may also be worth noting Perl 6, and by extension the Perl 6 developers, certainly receive a ton of very public ridicule and criticism already.
:-) This doesn't justify ridiculing others, but I am extremely familiar with the pain of being on the receiving end. Anyway, as I said, no offense was intended but obviously some was transmitted, and I apologize that my comment minimized your efforts or the efforts of others who put together these conferences. The lack of video is just a bit of a sore point around my house at the moment, and this was an opportunity to express my frustration, however badly I may have done so.
Pm
It's MUCH harder than you might think.
http://yapcna2006.equilibrious.net/2006-06-26.AdamKennedy/
http://yapcna2006.equilibrious.net/2006-06-28.AdamKennedy/
Re:YAPC::NA 2006
Alias on 2010-07-26T22:51:58
Harder than recutting this?
Being one of the organizers guilty of this sin, I can only say Sorry.
All conferences I've been involved in have had video teams, all of the teams were volunteers, and almost all of them found reasons not to finish the monumental task of editing the recorded material.
This sucks, but as long as the conferences are super-cheap and volunteer-based, I don't see an easy way out of this. Video editing is difficult, time-consuming and tedious. It's really hard to ask people to spend their precious time on boring stuff, and the few times someone says yes, they quickly figure out their mistake and "drop out."
Last year's Nordic Perl Workshop in Oslo is one of the later victims of this.
Re:Feeling bad about this
pmichaud on 2010-07-26T04:08:02
Just to be clear, many of us aren't expecting edited footage -- we'd be more than happy just to be able to get hold of the raw footage, no matter how raw it might happen to be.
Pm
A possible solution
robinsmidsrod on 2010-07-26T13:36:37
Why not upload the raw footage to some alt.binaries UseNet newsgroup? I'm not exactly sure which one, but there surely must exist something like alt.binaries.conferences.video or something, right?
Then you (the one with the raw footage) would not have to pay bandwidth costs ad infinitum and it would be easy to link to the files (create an NZB file useful for any "modern" newsreader).
The person in the presentation could then take responsibility for publishing something edited if the ones that did the recording does not find time.
I'm going to assume that if you have the necessary hardware to record a fair amount of video, you also have access to some decent network from which you can upload the material to UseNet. If UseNet is not an alternative, there is always BitTorrent.
Just my 2c.
Re:A possible solution
ChrisDolan on 2010-07-26T23:30:38
My raw footage for YAPC::NA 2006 was 1.2 TB. That's not feasible to upload.
Re:A possible solution
pmichaud on 2010-07-27T05:39:51
I agree 1.2 TB is too much to handle as a mass-upload. But there can be useful middle grounds between "upload it all" and "do absolutely nothing with it." A note somewhere to the speakers that says "I/we have your video footage, if you'd like a copy of _your_ talk video, contact
...". There are some of us (myself included) that would gladly ship a large-capacity USB drive around via postal mail to get my hands on missing footage and the chance to redistribute some of it to others. I agree this still means some burden for the person holding the videos (to locate the footage and copy it to the drive), but I'd really like the situation to somehow get beyond "requires too much work" or "uses too much bandwidth", and I'm willing to throw resources at it.
Pm
Re:A possible solution
pmichaud on 2010-07-27T05:44:49
Along this line, I'll be at YAPC::EU next week in Pisa, and I will bring a large-capacity USB drive with me. If anyone has any video footage from previous conferences that they could also get to YAPC::EU so that I can make some copies, I'd greatly appreciate it.
Pm
Re:Feeling bad about this
jdavidb on 2010-07-26T20:31:43
It seems there are many people who claim to be willing to edit if they can only get ahold of raw footage. In addition to the possibility of uploading the raw footage to some kind of distribution system, could it be possible to provide the raw footage to would-be editors via postal mail? Perhaps would-be editors could even contact those who have the raw footage with an offer to pay duplication costs and postage, if only there were a way for them to get their message to the right people.
Re:Feeling bad about this
Alias on 2010-07-27T01:34:49
If you don't know how you will edit the footage, it would be better to not record it at all.
At least then the speakers are more likely to set up something of their own.
I'm not a professional video editor but I am a conference speaker. I'd be more than happy to learn how to edit videos and clean up any that exist for talks I've given at YAPCs, etc. Just let me at 'em
Also, there's been some talk about paying people in the Perl community to do various things. Maybe TPF could offer a grant to anyone willing to do it for the bigger conferences. It's not development but it would be good marketing. And as we've seen from various attempts at it, it doesn't seem to work well as a purely volunteer effort.
Re:Hey, that's me.
Alias on 2010-07-30T15:34:11
Some interesting options for future conferences by the sounds of it, that we can fix for next time.
1. Have the camera operators (for which volunteering is plentiful often) verify distribution forms beforehand, and if no permission is there don't record at all.
(Cuts down on size, waste, and complexity in post-processing)
2. Simple person name and talk name on an A4 sheet, held up in front of camera??
Re:Hey, that's me.
Aristotle on 2010-07-31T21:52:41
Makes sense… catching mistakes at compile time is better.
:-) Re:Hey, that's me.
hobbs on 2010-08-04T08:30:44
Given that we had one third as many camera operators as cameras, doing anything in real time wasn't an option
:)
