Hey Gunnar On 2022/03/29 19:27, Gunnar Wolf wrote:
I know that all videoteam work is volunteer, and I very well known it
is one of the most stressed teams during the conference. But we_have_
had talks via Jitsi in DebConf in the past; I remember participating
in at least a couple during DC19:
https://debconf19.debconf.org/talks/83-whats-new-in-the-linux-kernel-and-whats-missing-in-debian/
https://debconf19.debconf.org/talks/71-anti-harassment-bof/
So -- I understand the video team not wanting to deal with a_flood_
of online talk proposals. But I guess that having a_few_ talks, maybe
restricted to not being part of the official program (i.e. as ad-hoc
activities), should remain an option. The presenter could even take
the work to record the talk and make it available afterwards.
Of course, I'm not doing the work, and I cannot commit your time --
and I'm arguing against a team decision that's already been taken. I
can commit that, if I can make it to Kosovo (and that's still marked
as somewhat-unlikely-but-possible) I'll join the team and cover some
such talks, if they are accepted... But please, I won't make more mess
about this, and I surely won't insist on the team for upholding a
decision already taken, and that's completely within their competences
to take!
I do believe that there needs to be a larger focus on online participation, to the point where this needs to be a requirement and factor for choosing future DebConf teams/venues. I followed DebConf{7,8,9,10,11,13,14} remotely, and some of them made it really easy to participate actively, small things like having the physical room's IRC channel up on a projector screen can make a huge difference.
Many people just don't have the option of traveling, maybe it's too far, or they have dependents to take care of, or they want to be kinder to the environment. And besides, it's difficult to scale DebConf any larger with the typical available venues we have, so long-term we have to be better at online participation.
I know it's difficult to find solutions when there's so much pressure already, but I think over the next few physical *mini* DebConfs we should experiment a lot more and try to find things that work well for remote participants.
I also just learned that element is building a videochat feature for element (that doesn't need any jitsi, it's purely built on matrix). Still very alpha, but could be yet another tool in our arsenal:
https://element.io/blog/introducing-native-matrix-voip-with-element-call/ -Jonathan