also sprach Maximiliano Curia <maxy@debian.org> [2015-06-19 13:16 +0200]:
> But there's an important part of video setup that would be lost in
> that case, as for the BoFs, having a video setup would provide
> a way for remote viewers to participate in the discussion, using
> irc to relay their comments.
>
> And, even though the BoFs per se might have a small audience, the
> results of such a meeting can be invaluable to Debian, and so,
> it's currently quite a hard decision for the content team that has
> to choose among the BoFs, which ones are going to have video and
> allow remote participation.
Don't we have a way to query the BoF organisers whether video is
wanted, which is information useful to room allocation?
In the majority of BoFs I attended in the previous years (and
especially at DC14, when this was toplicalised), we didn't want to
have video coverage, and if it was provided, then either the remote
participants were ignored (false expectations), or (a lot of) time
was lost with tech and the bi-modal interaction, which essentially
forces you to pace yourself with the slower medium, at which point
we might just as well stick with IRC meetings.
This might also be an argument for why maybe Amsterdam should maybe
*not* have video coverage (too many people, too hard to synchronise
it all with IRC, also more people available to carry out the word
and share information with those not present) and instead we should
offer video coverage in one or two of the small rooms (statistically
more likely to host teams with some key people remotely
participating).
I think the idea of teleconferencing is interesting. Although
teleconferencing also has significant impacts on the meeting, it's
still vastly better than video+IRC. It'd be great if we found people
who'd want to experiment with this at DC15.
The problem with unmanned video I see is that it'll shave time off
the meeting while people fiddle with the tech, it might well be
qualitatively crap, and it still needs to be post-processed anyway
to be useful, unless we just stream it without archiving. But then
I think teleconferencing would be the better approach.
In any case, all of the above already depends on the capacities of
the video team, and we should also make it optional to each BoF
organiser anyway.
If the concern is to not exclude remote contributors and create
resourceful material during these BoFs, then one alternative is
always for the organiser to ensure someone will write proper minutes
and share them with the team later on. Those might take a lot longer
to prepare than switching on a video camera, but they're going to be
more useful later on (indexing, faster reading than watching, etc.).
Most conferences I am involved with actually appoint minute keepers
to events who are the responsible to create short writeups about
everything that happened. IMHO, someone writing good documentation
about events during DC15 could be considered as such during a future
DC sponsorship decision.
--
.''`. martin f. krafft <madduck@debconf.org> @martinkrafft
: :' : DebConf orga team
`. `'`
`- DebConf15: Heidelberg, Germany: http://debconf15.debconf.org
DebConf16: Cape Town: https://wiki.debconf.org/wiki/DebConf16
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