Thread: postgres conferences missing videos?
am i the only one thinking that postgres is seriously lacking recordings from conferences? when i look at talks schedule from some postgres conference i always wonder why nobody records talks? i've heard arguments before, for other projects/conferences, that authors/companies don't allow recording of talks but that should not matter. postgres is losing a lot of promotional and educational materials, why is this happening? Aljosa
On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 1:45 PM, Aljoša Mohorović <aljosa.mohorovic@gmail.com> wrote: > postgres is losing a lot of promotional and educational materials, why > is this happening? > Someone has to do lots of work to tape the talks, get proper permissions from the presenters, and then host the videos. Often this would land on the shoulders of the conference organizers, who are already working hard just to pull off the live show. I do know that some talks at the PG East conference have been recorded and posted online. Perhaps you should look for those?
On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 8:23 PM, Vick Khera <vivek@khera.org> wrote: > Someone has to do lots of work to tape the talks, get proper > permissions from the presenters, and then host the videos. Often this > would land on the shoulders of the conference organizers, who are > already working hard just to pull off the live show. never said that it's not so just that i'm surprised/disappointed that it's so low priority. > I do know that some talks at the PG East conference have been recorded > and posted online. Perhaps you should look for those? the best collection i've found is at http://vimeo.com/channels/postgres it's not that there are no recordings just that conferences are missing an opportunity to promote postgres. Aljosa
On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 09:09:35PM +0100, Aljoša Mohorović wrote: > On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 8:23 PM, Vick Khera <vivek@khera.org> wrote: > > Someone has to do lots of work to tape the talks, get proper > > permissions from the presenters, and then host the videos. Often this > > would land on the shoulders of the conference organizers, who are > > already working hard just to pull off the live show. > > never said that it's not so just that i'm surprised/disappointed that > it's so low priority. Who proposes, volunteers! How are you going to help? Cheers, David. -- David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/ Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter Skype: davidfetter XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com iCal: webcal://www.tripit.com/feed/ical/people/david74/tripit.ics Remember to vote! Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 9:45 PM, David Fetter <david@fetter.org> wrote: > Who proposes, volunteers! How are you going to help? being on a different continent and unable to attend doesn't actually enable me to do something. my post doesn't try to undermine actual work being done by people on conferences. i'm just trying to point out that recordings are much more important for educational and promotional purposes and it currently looks like it's pretty low priority in postgres community. Aljosa
On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 11:55:20PM +0100, Aljoša Mohorović wrote: > On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 9:45 PM, David Fetter <david@fetter.org> wrote: > > Who proposes, volunteers! How are you going to help? > > being on a different continent and unable to attend doesn't actually > enable me to do something. Not so, by a long shot. If this is actually important to you, there are plenty of ways you could help, not least by funding the effort. Capable videographers are not cheap, and if you think we can get away with having amateurs, try watching a 45-minute talk recorded by an amateur, or better still, try coordinating the efforts of at least three people per talk, as you'll need massive redundancy. When professionals volunteer their time, they still have expenses like travel, storage media, etc., and you can help defray those. What you really, really need to stop doing is proposing that others do an enormous amount of work for your benefit without offering to help. You have two choices here that would be constructive: offer to help (much better) or keep quiet (at least not whiny). Cheers, David. -- David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/ Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter Skype: davidfetter XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com iCal: webcal://www.tripit.com/feed/ical/people/david74/tripit.ics Remember to vote! Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate
On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 12:20 AM, David Fetter <david@fetter.org> wrote: > Not so, by a long shot. If this is actually important to you, there > are plenty of ways you could help, not least by funding the effort. [...] > What you really, really need to stop doing is proposing that others do > an enormous amount of work for your benefit without offering to help. > You have two choices here that would be constructive: offer to help > (much better) or keep quiet (at least not whiny). funding looks like a good way to change this, is there a way to donate to postgres for a specific purpose? how can i setup an official page, preferably a part of postgres site, that focuses on collecting donations for organization of recordings? is there a payment system already enabled, can it be set to track donations for recording of conference talks? i am seriously interested in getting recordings from conferences although it's not only because i want to watch them, it's basically because i believe that postgres is losing a lot without recordings. Aljosa
Dne 21.3.2011 20:23, Vick Khera napsal(a): > On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 1:45 PM, Aljoša Mohorović > <aljosa.mohorovic@gmail.com> wrote: >> postgres is losing a lot of promotional and educational materials, why >> is this happening? >> > > Someone has to do lots of work to tape the talks, get proper > permissions from the presenters, and then host the videos. Often this > would land on the shoulders of the conference organizers, who are > already working hard just to pull off the live show. Not that much - I've recorded local JUG monthly meetings for more than a year. With a decent DV cam and a microphone, it's quite easy. After all, it's just a pearson standing and talking, not a LOTR ... Hosting - unless you want something special, you can use youtube. We're quite happy with it. Tomas
Dne 21.3.2011 21:45, David Fetter napsal(a): > Who proposes, volunteers! How are you going to help? Well, if this is the only problem then I happily volunteer to take care of this for pgday 2011. regards Tomas
Dne 22.3.2011 00:20, David Fetter napsal(a): > On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 11:55:20PM +0100, Aljoša Mohorović wrote: >> On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 9:45 PM, David Fetter <david@fetter.org> wrote: >>> Who proposes, volunteers! How are you going to help? >> >> being on a different continent and unable to attend doesn't actually >> enable me to do something. > > Not so, by a long shot. If this is actually important to you, there > are plenty of ways you could help, not least by funding the effort. > > Capable videographers are not cheap, and if you think we can get away > with having amateurs, try watching a 45-minute talk recorded by an > amateur, or better still, try coordinating the efforts of at least > three people per talk, as you'll need massive redundancy. Well, I'm the first one to admit I'm a lousy videographer. But is that really that important? The person is just standing there and talking, so what really matters is the sound. Because the slides are usually about 20% of the information. So just put there a tripod, a reasonable HD cam for $300 and you'll get a decent video of the session. > When professionals volunteer their time, they still have expenses like > travel, storage media, etc., and you can help defray those. Yes, there are travel expenses and it takes time. Storage media is not a big deal - you can use a simple HDD. regards Tomas
On 03/21/11 5:04 PM, Tomas Vondra wrote: > So just put there a tripod, a reasonable HD cam for $300 and you'll get > a decent video of the session. > you definitely want a sound patch from a lapel mic or the room PA, and not be using on-camera sound. and probably two cameras, one aimed at the presentation, and the other tracking the speaker, so you can put them in an inset, or cut between the views. there's always *some* post production that needs to be done, and its all quite time consuming.
On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 7:16 PM, John R Pierce <pierce@hogranch.com> wrote: > On 03/21/11 5:04 PM, Tomas Vondra wrote: >> >> So just put there a tripod, a reasonable HD cam for $300 and you'll get >> a decent video of the session. >> > > you definitely want a sound patch from a lapel mic or the room PA, and not > be using on-camera sound. > > and probably two cameras, one aimed at the presentation, and the other > tracking the speaker, so you can put them in an inset, or cut between the > views. there's always *some* post production that needs to be done, > and its all quite time consuming. Somebody ought to talk to the folks that run PyCon - the videos there are excellent and typically available within hours or less. Perhaps they have some useful insight or advice? -- Jon
> On 03/21/11 5:04 PM, Tomas Vondra wrote: >> So just put there a tripod, a reasonable HD cam for $300 and you'll get >> a decent video of the session. >> > > you definitely want a sound patch from a lapel mic or the room PA, and > not be using on-camera sound. Yes, that's definitely true. We're using a standalone dictaphone with a lapel mic, and the results are great. > and probably two cameras, one aimed at the presentation, and the other > tracking the speaker, so you can put them in an inset, or cut between > the views. there's always *some* post production that needs to > be done, and its all quite time consuming. Depends on what you aim for. Two cameras will definitely give you more options, but you'll need to spend a tremendous amount of time on that. That's why we're happy with one camera, because in that case the postproduction is really simple (just cut the ends, put there the audio, encode, publish). regards Tomas
On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 09:09:35PM +0100, Aljoša Mohorović wrote: > never said that it's not so just that i'm surprised/disappointed that > it's so low priority. If you are disappointed that something has been made a low priority by someone else, then perhaps you should consider making it a high priority for yourself. This is a community project, so if you think this is an important thing from which the community could benefit, you could volunteer to make it happen. Best regards, A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs@crankycanuck.ca
On Mon, 21 Mar 2011 19:21:46 -0500, Jon Nelson <jnelson+pgsql@jamponi.net> wrote: > ts all quite time consuming. > > Somebody ought to talk to the folks that run PyCon - the videos there > are excellent and typically available within hours or less. Perhaps > they have some useful insight or advice? > The problem is not technology, it is resources. Pycon is a 1200+ person conference, it is also more expensive than the PostgreSQL Conferences. PgEast/West when we were running 3 tracks it was easy to keep up with the requirements to get video up but now, 6-7 tracks? 3-4 days? Only 249.00 to show up? That is a lot of resources. Simply put, we would have needed a minimum of 21 volunteers just for video (assuming we each volunteer was dedicated for only a day). The conferences just aren't that big yet. Sincerely, Joshua D. Drake > -- > Jon -- PostgreSQL - XMPP: jdrake(at)jabber(dot)postgresql(dot)org Consulting, Development, Support, Training 503-667-4564 - http://www.commandprompt.com/ The PostgreSQL Company, serving since 1997
Personally, I vastly prefer written information to video. I can read far faster than someone can read/explain somethingto me. Plus, it is easier to refer back to. Susan
On 03/22/11 12:29 PM, Susan Cassidy wrote: > Personally, I vastly prefer written information to video. I can read far faster than someone can read/explain somethingto me. Plus, it is easier to refer back to. this++
On 22/03/2011 19:29, Susan Cassidy wrote: > Personally, I vastly prefer written information to video. I can read > far faster than someone can read/explain something to me. Plus, it > is easier to refer back to. +100 However, I fully appreciate that if it's difficult to find the (wo)manpower to organise videos, it's going to be 100 times harder to find someone to transcribe all those talks. :-) Ray. -- Raymond O'Donnell :: Galway :: Ireland rod@iol.ie
Dne 22.3.2011 20:29, Susan Cassidy napsal(a): > Personally, I vastly prefer written information to video. I can read far faster than someone can read/explain somethingto me. Plus, it is easier to refer back to. > > Susan > 100% true. But it's also true that slides (and that's all we have usually) are not a complete information - it's merely a synopsis of the talk. Without the speech, it's often unusable. Tomas
On 22/03/2011 7:47 AM, Tomas Vondra wrote: > Dne 21.3.2011 20:23, Vick Khera napsal(a): >> On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 1:45 PM, Aljoša Mohorović >> <aljosa.mohorovic@gmail.com> wrote: >>> postgres is losing a lot of promotional and educational materials, why >>> is this happening? >>> >> >> Someone has to do lots of work to tape the talks, get proper >> permissions from the presenters, and then host the videos. Often this >> would land on the shoulders of the conference organizers, who are >> already working hard just to pull off the live show. > > Not that much - I've recorded local JUG monthly meetings for more than a > year. With a decent DV cam and a microphone, it's quite easy. After all, > it's just a pearson standing and talking, not a LOTR ... Yep ... and something many people don't realize is that they don't even need a dedicated DV cam anymore. Many "still" digital cameras make excellent video cameras now. My Canon PowerShot SX20IS compact camera takes great 720p video and supports a sound patch if desired, though the directional mike on the camera is surprisingly good. I can zoom seriously deep and still get a good result thanks to the high-range lens, too. My work's Canon EOS 50D does even more impressive video - and the 5D Mark II the photographer uses is incredible. Many people have low-end SLR or high-end fixed cameras that're really good video cameras, they just don't know it. Many of them will have tripods, and a basic tripod for fixed indoor use is cheap anyway. Given that, I wouldn't think that gear is much of an obstacle. -- Craig Ringer Tech-related writing at http://soapyfrogs.blogspot.com/
On Fri, 2011-04-01 at 11:37 +0800, Craig Ringer wrote: > Many people have low-end SLR or high-end fixed cameras that're really > good video cameras, they just don't know it. Many of them will have > tripods, and a basic tripod for fixed indoor use is cheap anyway. > > Given that, I wouldn't think that gear is much of an obstacle. No, gear is not the obstacle. It is man power. Joshua D. Drake -- PostgreSQL.org Major Contributor Command Prompt, Inc: http://www.commandprompt.com/ - 509.416.6579 Consulting, Training, Support, Custom Development, Engineering http://twitter.com/cmdpromptinc | http://identi.ca/commandprompt
On 1/04/2011 12:38 PM, Joshua D. Drake wrote: > On Fri, 2011-04-01 at 11:37 +0800, Craig Ringer wrote: > >> Many people have low-end SLR or high-end fixed cameras that're really >> good video cameras, they just don't know it. Many of them will have >> tripods, and a basic tripod for fixed indoor use is cheap anyway. >> >> Given that, I wouldn't think that gear is much of an obstacle. > > No, gear is not the obstacle. It is man power. For what it's worth, if I can ever swing the $lots for the flights to come to one of the conferences, I'd be a willing one-day volunteer. Alas, I'm in Western Australia :S -- Craig Ringer Tech-related writing at http://soapyfrogs.blogspot.com/