Re: [Boost-users] BoostCon

From: Maurizio Vitale (mav_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-04-14 03:48:39

I suspect the venue plays a role in people's decision to come or not. 
It certainly did it for me.

Although I'd be terribly interested in the content of the conference,
the prospect of having to fly to some other city and waste pretty much
an extra day in local transportation is at the moment keeping me away.

In my case I'd rather have paid a few hundred dollars more to the
organization in exchange for a more accessible location. I might still
come, and the decision will not be influenced in any way by knowing
that recording will be available at a later stage.

On making recordings available, I have a few comments:

   - video is problematic, requires equipment and effort and frankly
     doesn't add much.  Unless people plan to do presentations with
     cheer leaders around them, that's it.

   - audio is almost free. At worst, the notebook from which the
     presentations are beamed have a microphone and can record while
     powerpoint wastes cycles. But it shouldn't be difficult to hook a
     separate computer to the conference sound mixer.  And publishing
     slides+audio would be terrific.

   - if pre-registrations were good you can decide to go ahead and
     record the audio anyhow (for training the hotel staff and improving
     the quality of service, of course :-)).  Copyrights and permissions
     can be sorted out at a later stage before pubblication.  If you do
     record you have an option to publish, if you don't you lose the
     opportunity.

   - if you then manage to make the recording available, I think it
     would be very good promotion for next year conference: people know
     well that most of the value of a conference is in being in the same
     place with presenters and other practicioners.

On large corporations, yes they can be bitchy for no particular
reason. I use to work for one.

But in general things are sorted out, especially if nobody is making
money out of it. 
As an example, I was at the Y Combinators startup school and all
presentations were recorded by multiple people. The recordings were
not made by the organization, but were placed on the organization's
website. One large company that does no evil asked for their
presentation (both audio and slides! to be removed), but other than
that everything was published (and thanks to the power of the
internetS, even the removed one is still kind of floating around
elsewhere, which is knowledge that might be of use in Washington these
days).

At least publishing slides shouldn't be a problem at all, from a legal
standpoint. Most conferences publish proceedings which for large
conferences (say IEEE or ACM) are made available to the public.  And
when I was working for large corporations nobody has ever asked me
whether the conference was large or small, or whether proceedings
would have been made available. It was understood that if you present
things to a conference open to public registration, you were willing
to disclose the material publicly. Now slides are a bit different
because they may contain material that you don't necessarily want to
be printed and saved for posterity (typically half-baked attempts at
humor), but tutorial-style slides are probably pretty aseptic and
safe.

In short, it would be terrific if you could make recording available.
But I understand your position.
Regards,

        Maurizio