Re: Saddened by the amount of events in video-equipped rooms which are not recorded
Hi Phil,
On Thu, Aug 02, 2018 at 11:01:58AM +0200, Philip Hands wrote:
> Wouter Verhelst <wouter@debian.org> writes:
>
> > Hi team!
> >
> > Since a few years, debconf has given speakers the ability to mark a talk
> > as one that should not be recorded on video. Such talks sometimes get
> > scheduled in rooms with video equipment.
> >
> > As a member of the FOSDEM organisation, which has an official policy of
> > "if you want it to happen at FOSDEM, you MUST consent to it being
> > recorded on video", I must say I am disheartened by this. Having a talk
> > or BoF be on camera is often useful for various reasons:
> >
> > - It allows remote participation by those of us not lucky enough to make
> > it to the DebConf in question;
> > - It creates a record of what has been said in the talk, which can be
> > useful to refer to after the fact;
> > - It allows people for who English is not a first language to replay the
> > video a few times until they understand what is happening, and/or for
> > things to be subtitled so that they can follow what's happening in
> > their native language (this latter doesn't happen as often as we'd
> > like currently, but we do have a setup for subtitling).
> > - If you want to be at two talks or BoFs which happen at the same time,
> > you can go to the one talk in the knowledge that you'll always be able
> > to watch the video of the other one.
> >
> > While I can understand that sometimes there may be reasons for things
> > not to be recorded, I think that in service of the greater Debian
> > community, DebConf should try to make as many events as possible be
> > public; that is, we should make things recorded by default, not by the
> > whim of the speaker/facilitator of the talk or BoF.
> >
> > It's obviously way too late for this to happen right now anymore, but
> > I[1] would like to suggest that for next year, submission procedures are
> > changed so that:
> >
> > - The form where talk submissions can be made is, if necessary, changed
> > so that things will be recorded by default, unless the speaker
> > explicitly requests otherwise;
> > - It is made clear that "I don't think this would be useful" is not
> > in and of itself a good enough reason (other people might reasonably
> > disagree with that position);
> > - If a speaker requests that a talk not be recorded, we ask them to
> > explain why they request that, so that if the request is based on a
> > misunderstanding of what that would entail practically this can be
> > cleared up;
> > - Talks which are marked as not recorded will by default be scheduled in
> > rooms which have no video content, so that if the not to be recorded
> > talk is marked so for privacy reasons, we don't have to worry about
> > video equipment being left on by mistake, and so that talks which
> > might otherwise have been usefully recorded can still be scheduled in
> > a room with the necessary equipment.
> >
> > Thoughts?
>
> I know that some of them were specifically requested to be without
> recording, so I suppose there is no reason to put them in a different
> room if that was going to leave the room empty.
My point is that sometimes this is requested when it would not have been
necessary. The fact that they are specifically requesting that seems
wrong to me, at least in some cases.
> Also, the ad-hoc sessions do not get video coverage, as a matter of
> policy.
I believe this policy was set because the video team cannot be expected
to provide video coverage at extreme short notice. That however
shouldn't mean we can't provide any coverage for ad-hoc sessions if they
were requested quite well in advance...
In addition, like Andreas already said, it should be the responsibility
of the scheduling and/or video team to decide whether or not video
coverage can be done in that case, not of the speaker.
> Is what you're seeing (or rather not seeing ;-) ) actually an
> articact of there being a lot of ad-hoc sessions?
Possibly, but some of the sessions have been there for quite a while.
> Perhaps we need to re-examine that policy, or the reason for there being
> a lot of ad-hoc sessions in that case?
That might work too, yes; but I don't think that negates (all of) the
things I said above.
--
Could you people please use IRC like normal people?!?
-- Amaya Rodrigo Sastre, trying to quiet down the buzz in the DebConf 2008
Hacklab
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