Kerry, some comments on your observations:
1. By not recording the videos, we're being "penny wise and pound foolish." Given all the money and labor that's spent to stage Wikimania and getting people there to present, while feeding and housing them, I'd say it's borderline negligent not to memorialize and record people's presentations and insights for the rest of the community.
2. Yes, the fellowship and social mixing is a huge aspect of Wikimania. But that goal is not mutually exclusive of relaying the valuable insights of sessions and presenters to the greater community. In fact *because* hallway conversations and ad hoc meetings at Wikimania are so common and there are so many parallel tracks, most Wikimania attendees don't even get to see most of the sessions.
3. You're never going to see metrics on those videos that will approach viral hits on Youtube. But that's the wrong way of looking at it. If those videos get "only" hundreds of views, that's still 10x more than the number of people in the audience at a Wikimania session. It's the quality of who those hundreds of viewers makes a huge difference. We should be encouraging more communication among the small circle of folks who contribute to and develop the future of our software systems and community norms. (We've seen the tension that arises when developments like VisualEditor, and MediaViewer are perceived as being disconnected from the community, so we need to keep these lines of communication consistent and open.)
4. In just the past two weeks, I've been able to point people to the Wikimania 2015 videos to get caught up on important developments. For example, we're moving forward in significant ways on video, and in a recent planning call, I was able to direct new stakeholders and WMF staff to our Wikimania video presentations to get caught up on where we are. I've directed folks to the presentations of Aaron Shaw and Mako looking at Wikia and WikiHow as it has implications for en.wp IP editing policy. And multiple folks have asked whether Guillaume Paumier's highly praised talk "My life as an autistic Wikipedian" was recorded. Sadly, it was not.
5. Finally, don't let perfect video recording be the enemy of good video recording. Let's get video recording on the "must do" list, and then we can work on optimizing quality and price.
-Andrew Lih Associate professor of journalism, American University Email: andrew@andrewlih.com WEB: http://www.andrewlih.com BOOK: The Wikipedia Revolution: http://www.wikipediarevolution.com PROJECT: Wiki Makes Video http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wiki_Makes_Video
On Mon, Aug 3, 2015 at 3:13 PM, Kerry Raymond kerry.raymond@gmail.com wrote:
As someone who has never attended a Wikimania but would like to, I don’t think videos are the solution. As someone who has organised conferences and had this issue of videoing come up, again I don’t think videos are the solution.
Folks who can’t attend events for whatever reason do ask for videos (I’ve done it too!). However, I would suggest looking hard at the stats on how often videos are viewed (and if there is a way to know if they are viewed all the way through or not). I know that I might look at videos of a couple of keynotes and maybe some talk that someone really recommends to me knowing my interest, but I would be genuinely unlikely to look at a whole lot of them. When people say “I wish I could go to Wikimania”, I don’t think they are saying “I wish I could listen to those talks”. Conferences are much more about the opportunity to interact, including the opportunity to interact in relation to the talks. Also, when you go to a conference, you are committed to setting aside those days of your life to focussing on the conference (well, that used to be the case, now with mobile devices and wifi, everyone sits in conferences reading their email, checking FaceBook, and keeping on top of their job back home, and generally misses hearing the talks even though they are in the same room!). If you aren’t going to the conference, you don’t have the big block of time in your life set aside to watch all the videos. Also a conference generates its own excitement, you’re there and your endorphins are working overtime. With watching videos after the event, you don’t have that buzz. When I watch videos, I know I often give them my attention for a couple of minutes, then have them going while I read email or whatever – the video finishes and I haven’t heard it as my mind has been elsewhere.
And, no matter what people say, there is a lot of work involved in creating videos both during the event and in postprocessing after the event. People say “quality doesn’t matter” in advance but then people complain afterwards if the quality isn’t perfect (can’t see the speaker clearly, can’t hear the speaker clearly, can’t see the slide projection). Again people say this can be done with volunteers, but actually your volunteers are wanting to engage with the conference, not spend the whole conference messing around with video equipment. And if the videos are not captured well in the first place, it’s hard to fix those problems after the event.
Also video postprocessing is mostly done after the event (it’s too busy during the event). What people (who don’t organise conferences) don’t seem to understand is that for organisers, the end of the conference means a return to their normal activities. For months, they’ve been putting off their boss, colleagues, family and friends with “please, can this wait until after the conference”. Of course, there are post-conference actions that have to be done (payments and accounts finalised, thank you letters written, reports written, etc) but, as far as your boss/colleagues/family/friends are concerned, the conference is OVER – you have no favours left, you have to make it up to them. It’s hard enough to fit in the minimum post-conference actions that you have to do, let alone extra things like high quality videos. And the adrenaline that allowed you and your volunteers to get everything done before and during the conference has now deserted you; you’ve run your race and have nothing left in your tank.
So videoing and postprocessing often ends up being done by professionals, meaning a lot of money spent. It’s so easy to say “use volunteers” but the thing about volunteers is that they do the things they want when they feel like doing them to the extent of their ability. And doing them in the middle of the conference and after the conference is not a great time for that (they want to engage with the conference and they need to return to their normal duties after the event too). And you might have the volunteers but who just don’t have that skill set. Also unless you get those videos out quickly, nobody will watch them – the momentum is lost.
In summary, I think it is much cheaper and easier to collect presentation slides or speaker notes or whatever other material the presenter has and make them available as a way to get conference content to non-attendees and this should be the preferred strategy for the bulk of presentations. Videos should be limited to keynotes or talks expected to be of particular interest. Stats on viewing and perhaps surveying on how much of the videos are being viewed should be collected to see how much the videos are actually used. And look at using professionals to do the video work, unless you really do have suitably skilled volunteers available (and not committed to other tasks), if you want the videos to be of good quality and be available quickly.
Kerry
*From:* wikimania-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto: wikimania-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] *On Behalf Of *?????? *Sent:* Tuesday, 4 August 2015 4:22 AM *To:* Wikimania general list (open subscription) < wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org> *Subject:* Re: [Wikimania-l] Video recording of Wikimania sessions
Andrew++
I find it odd that we are willing to have a huge budget for Wikimania and none for recording videos of talks for non-attendees to view. I think we owe it to them. It can be crowdfunded if need be.
An interesting idea perhaps is to group video if we have a reliable way to crowd source this.
I did notice a video cam recording the talk after mine. I am unsure if mine was recorded as well. Does anyone know who was operating the tripod camera? I seen it in other talks too.
-- とある白い猫 (To Aru Shiroi Neko)
On 18 July 2015 at 23:17, Asaf Bartov abartov@wikimedia.org wrote:
Andrew++.
A.
On Sat, Jul 18, 2015 at 9:52 AM, Andrew Lih andrew@andrewlih.com wrote:
I'm trying to guerrilla video record as many Wikimania sessions that I can attend, so I cannot respond at length.
But I do want to say: the cost/benefit analysis needs to consider the quality of the viewers and not just the quantity.
When a Wikipedian in Residence can show their institution the video of their Wikimania presentation as evidence of impact and engagement, it can lead to renewal of their positions and more initiatives.
When the video of a Wikimania panel on COI and PR editing can convince more multi-billion dollar PR firm to understand our guidelines and terms of use, that's a major outcome.
When someone talks about Wiki Loves Earth, #100wikidays or other grassroots projects, video provides a unique window into the emotions and motivations you cannot capture in a mailing list or blog post.
When in 10 years, we want to know the passions and personalities that led us to where the movement is, where will we look?
If we're expecting Wikimania videos to rack up the same views as LOLcats, it ain't going to happen. It has always been a very small core community does a massive amount of the innovation and work that keeps the projects going, and the ability to talk to each other in deep, complex and accessible ways is vital.
For a movement dedicated to capturing the sum of all human knowledge, it's surprising how blasé we are in letting our own community history fall by the wayside.
-Andrew Lih Associate professor of journalism, American University Email: andrew@andrewlih.com WEB: http://www.andrewlih.com BOOK: The Wikipedia Revolution: http://www.wikipediarevolution.com PROJECT: Wiki Makes Video http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wiki_Makes_Video
On Sat, Jul 18, 2015 at 9:31 AM, Nkansah Rexford nkansahrexford@gmail.com wrote:
Recording video* is easy; you can do it on most mobile phones these days.
And on that note, the wiki indaba conference was recorded solely on a mobile phone[1]. Although sound quality wasn't the best, with considerable thought on getting an appropriate accessory to handle sound, phones are also an alternative worth looking into.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTdU_5c77__7y3igaHAauOyAvo2crj2cp
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