Donal O Duibhir

“Hi Donal Roman from SwiNOG here. We are contemplating the video-capturing of the events for delayed release as a service to the community. So far, offers for running the video operation never materialized, but we may try to run it ourselfs at one of the next events and would be interested to hear what worked for you and how. Can you elaborate a bit on how you are (technically) doing the videos? Are you streaming live or only on-demand and why? Feel free to get in touch directly Roman roman@swinog.org”

Hi Roman, Great question. Currently we capture and share after the event on youtube https://youtube.com/inognet and have started splitting the video talks up individually -> which gives us a drip feed of content with their own metrics, links, OG tags etc. We have not yet managed to do streaming but are working on it for the next one! As we move spaces each iNOG, it's highly dependent upon what's available to us from in-house to borrowed equipment but there's usually 4 options and then we also post/share on https://inog.net a) We normally borrow a camera and wireless microphone from a department of HEAnet in Ireland i.e. HEAnet multimedia division https://www.heanet.ie/services/multimedia (Thank you!). Am guessing there should be an equivalent sub-department in https://www.switch.ch/edu/ ? We then end up spending about 4-6 hours editing the video. We have found that cropping the video to the presenters head or top half is best and then placing that over a full screen slide is best for file size/storytelling (using the PiP(Picture in Picture) option). I use iMovie on Mac OSX. Sound quality and bad lighting for live demos are always our biggest challenges. b) The other option we sometimes have is to use the host venue's in-house video conferencing system (Cisco Webex/Zoom etc) to record the video/sound but *always* try and get the HEAnet camera as a backup running concurrently. It's super important to run tests in advance with speakers, laptops, and local IT/AV to gain confidence for the event. c) The host venue paid for their own videographer to come in and record the sessions which was *ace* as it meant we could just wait a few days for a finished product and focus 100% on spacemaking, organizing, hosting, and user experience. d) The most amazing set up so far has been with Facebook who have a professional level recording studio set up in their event space with awesome lighting and multiple cameras + microphones + production desk: https://goo.gl/EnuQFz = wonderful! But we had to wait for legal teams to clear their talk video before releasing, so watch out! Note: We feel very lucky when the host venue/ sponsor org looks after us as per (c) and (d). (b) is great too in terms of time and effort, and (a) we are always super grateful for - but it means the most work on our end. It's important to have someone volunteer to be 100% responsible for the A/V(Audio Visual) at the event and also tasked with delivering/chasing the final product. Beggars can't be choosers, but definitely try and factor AV in to your location decision making, including in to checklists and 'runsheets' for the night. We would love to build out our own "pod" for event recording as any external providers normally charge a lot (and we do everything with no budget i.e. for free). We're tracking some possible solutions for our own pod here https://goo.gl/tCctX2 for some future scenarios/funding. Once you have a small library of content, we then have bots that post videos via Twitter and in our Slack channel to help learning and growth for all. We also feel it's important for growing community that potential new members and speakers can visualize and associate with posted content... as a sort of "show me" rather than "tell me" due to the fact that humans like to see other humans which helps them envision themselves there already. Hope this helps, Donal @inognet