conference recording thoughts

TODO gathering thoughts on things to request from conference planners

TODO discuss requirements for unconference versus conference

(maybe this page is better called mini-conference recording talks? thoughts for small conferences?)

For a conference, we need the following for the best outcome.

• frequent(?) "stand up" meetings (irc, phone, something) (frequency varies the closer to the event we are)

• talk and schedule data maintained in database (can see if current pycon software works for you)

• api to provide well-formed schedule data based on the current live data (provide example) (current pycon site has this)

• contact information for a/the facilities manager of the event location so that we can

• arrange freight delivery and pick up

• gain access to the facilities (need enough(?) time to setup, tear down, do recording checks)

• obtain room layout diagrams, power, wiring

• have a secure on-site location to store equipment during the event (24hr access?)

• contact information for the person/group responsible for providing audio so that he can

• arrange to patch in to the system

• alternatively, let Carl provide av services, he's usually cheaper than using the venue services

• a liaison to the conference planning committee who has authority to

• plan room layout (be able to arrange location of equipment)

• contact speakers with questions on talk requirements (e.g. do they need to have a sound feed recorded from their laptop, etc.)

What is a good list of go/no-go types of things. i.e. what can be deal breakers and why?

• need secure place to ship (or drive up) equipment (define exactly)
• why: obvious?
• need data and meta-data(define exactly) of sufficient(define exactly) quality
• why: typically Carl is working on his own with a floating pool of volunteers who may or may not get any pay or expenses comped (but he tries). so if the event does not provide well-formed live up-to-date data, it consumes blocks of time from volunteers or from Carl. They'd have to stop what they are doing (i.e. recording and getting results posted) in order to poll schedule status to update information by hand in the video workflow database. if we had more money, we could pay someone to do this, but we don't. since the current pycon site has the data api cooked in, it is really good to re-use it (huh, btw, we should at a unit test or something to make sure that functionality doesn't break or go away) (NOTE: Carl read this paragraph and doesn't like it because it implies manual data entry is an option. we disagree on that point because no one ever gets the data feed right and if it was really no-go we would never record anything. but it also means that I might volunteer at the last minute to manually enter crap in to the system and did you know I have a full time job and am pretty busy? so I might not be available. also, I might cry.)

more random thoughts

• can you re-use the current pycon site to handle talk data?
• how many simultaneous tracks? we need to know how many recording kits to bring and how many people need to work
• will the entire conference be recorded with a permissive cc license? (current pycon has people give release permission when submitting talks)
• if conf organizers want videos to have an opening slide with a specific style for the conference, with logos, etc. they need to provide the assets enough in advance to be used when the talks are being encoded. if not, the talks can get posted without a styled title page.

more more random thoughts (one day this will evolve from a hodge-podge wiki page in to a mammal or reptile or something)

For python related conferences, there is a code base that pycon US uses that should be (hypothetically11!ty!) forkable for other conferences. It is hypothetically very helpful for us, since the talk/scheduling api works with Carl's video workflow. (if you decide to roll your own site and provide talk/schedule in a friendly api realize that the number of times that this has actually worked is vanishingly small so you should ask yourself why this time will be different)