C++Now Videos: Time to Go Pro?

[Jon Kalb]

 

tl;dr Do you want to have professional recording of C++Now sessions?

 

 

Boost Steering Committee, C++Now Planning Committee, Marshall (Recording Chair), Bryce (S/V Chair),

 

Some background:

 

Conference Chair Spending Authority

During the face-to-face Steering Committee meeting at C++Now in 2012, I asked the Steering Committee for guidelines about what kinds of conference related expenses I, as C++Now Conference Chair, needed to get Steering Committee approval for.

 

The answer was that the Steering Committee gave me authorization to approve expenses for the conference with two conditions:

1.       The conference would still be projected to run in the black

2.       There was no obligation of an on-going expense (continuing into future years)

 

In my opinion, this has served us well as I can make conference related decisions quickly and we’ve come to learn that getting SC approval in a timely manner is a non-trivial issue.

 

Note that the S/V program originally fell under these conditions because it originally didn’t include us paying expenses for the S/Vs. We do cover most of those expenses now, but that was separately approved by the Steering Committee.

 

Conference Sponsorships

I’ve unilaterally followed the guideline that when developing the spending plan for the conference, I’ve not included sponsorship money. The practice has always been that the attendees, not sponsors, pay for the conference and that all sponsorship money goes directly to the Boost treasury. This works for two reasons:

1.       I don’t have to worry about whether we have sponsorship money before, for example, planning the picnic.

2.       This allows Boost to accumulate funds to do things which the community wants to fund (such as S/V expenses, BSoC, purchase of testing hardware).

 

This has also worked well. Even though our Sponsorship situation has varied from year to year, the conference has run smoothly and Boost has accumulated funds.

 

Professional Recording

This year I want to do something that might change this pattern. We have a quote from Bash Films, the company that does the recording, editing, and uploading of session videos for CppCon. For $18,500 Bash will record, edit, and upload all three C++Now tracks (60-65 videos).

 

In anticipation of recording a single track, we have raised the registration fee for C++Now 2017 by $100. This will increase the pre-Sponsorship revenue of the conference by about $10K which I had expected to apply to paying Bash to record a single track.

 

Bash’s quotes for a single track and for all three tracks this year are significantly less expensive than their quote from a few years ago. (Part of the reason for this is that they have become more cost effective and part of it is that they have an event in Denver that is time-adjacent to C++Now and they can save on travel.) This means that recording a track can be covered by the registration rate increase alone and recording all three tracks is within our means.

 

Aspen Institute Permission

One issue with recording all three tracks is that in the past, the Aspen Institute has let us know that they would permit us to record our sessions in Peapcke and Hudson, only if we were doing it ourselves, but if we were to have professionals do this, they would expect us to use their techs. At the rates that the Institute charges for AV services, this would be prohibitively expensive. After receiving Bash’s quote on doing all three tracks, I’ve pressed the Institute on this and they have given permission to allow us to use Bash Films for our sessions at their venue.

 

Advantages

I want to thank Marshall and the S/Vs of each year for all their work in recording, editing, and uploading. My gratitude is sincere and is not diminished by the fact that I think having Bash do this work for us would have several advantages.

·         The quality of the recording would be better

o    The venue, particularly Flug, is a challenging one to record at and professionals will be better able to deal with these issues.

·         The editing will be much better

o    If you’ve not seen what Bash does with the CppCon videos, you really need to check that out. They picture-in-picture the speaker in a tiny window to make the slides large and legible. For the slides, they capture the direct video output and do not reply on pointing a camera at the screen. Here is an example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGu9XWsOgWQ

·         The upload time will be very much better

o    We’ll be able to have the videos in our YouTube channel within weeks (perhaps one or two) of the conference instead of months.

·         It frees up time for Marshall and the S/V to spend less time worrying about and tracking cameras and memory drives and more time participating in the conference.

 

There is also an important advantage to having all of the tracks done by Bash, so that we don’t have to deal with speakers that push very strongly to be in Flug just because they’ll have a better recording and we don’t have to explain to the community why some videos are up right away and some are going to be delayed.

 

Future Years

Having Bash record sessions this year does not obligate us to do the same in future years (although it will set a quality bar that we’ll not want to fall below).

 

This year is a very good year for this for two reasons. One is that, due to a Bash event in Denver, we are getting a better quote than we are likely to get in future years. Another reason is that we are having a very good sponsorship year this year. (It looks like we’ll be over $13K in sponsorships for C++Now 2017.) I am optimistic that we can do well in future years, but, of course, there are no guarantees.

 

Summary

Although having Bash record all three sessions is technically something I can authorize myself (the conference will still be in the black and there is no future obligation), I wanted to consult with the Steering Committee about this because it is a very large expense and it does set a precedence, if not an obligation, for future conferences.

 

I also want to get thoughts from the planning committee. For this kind of money, we could probably have steaks and Champaign at the picnic. Is this a good use of conference money?

 

Mark Bashian, the owner of Bash Films is current travelling and will be contacting me when he returns in a couple of weeks. Currently, my plan is to tell him that we want all three tracks recorded, but I’ll reconsider that there are strong negative comments.

 

Please share your thoughts.

 

Jon

 

[charleyb123 .]

<snip, proposed $18K for professional recording at C++Now>

I think this is a good direction (professional recording for C++Now):

(a) We've had failed recordings for sessions in the past (some past
sessions have no recordings, or no sound, or were terminated early).
As mentioned, some of the venues are tricky to get right
(lighting/sound).

(b) Professional recordings is a key deliverable to the community (for
attendees, and as promotional information for future attendees).

(c) This quote is too-good to pass up. (Maybe by accepting this quote
we have a chance at also locking in low quotes in future years?)

(d) Sounds like our budget this year gives us this option (with the
mentioned sponsorships, sounds like this option does not create other
budgetary hardships; and it may set precedent for a very tangible
thing for which we might be able to recruit specific sponsorship in
the future).

In short, if we want more high-quality C++ content to grow the entire
C++ community, this would help.

Indeed, a few years from now the only thing remaining from the
conference is these recordings, and I think they provide high value to
the entire C++ community.

Just my $0.02.

--charley

[David Sankel]

On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 8:40 PM, Jon Kalb <jon...@boost.org> wrote:

 

tl;dr Do you want to have professional recording of C++Now sessions?

Yes. I think the drop in attendance last year is due, in no small part, to the success of CppCon, which has high quality recordings. That other conference has upped the ante and that's a really good thing for the C++ community at large. C++Now, in my experience, has better content so I'm happy to have the recordings shine more brightly on the interwebs.

-- David Sankel

[Matt Calabrese]

On Feb 1, 2017 20:40, "Jon Kalb" <jon...@boost.org> wrote:

tl;dr Do you want to have professional recording of C++Now sessions?

I think this is really important. C++Now is an amazing conference, but it's difficult to showcase that without professional quality video. Even if a session is fantastic, it can get lost if a video is hard to hear or if it's impossible to see slides or a screen presentation. If someone is looking to attend a C++ conference and they are starting by comparing videos with CppCon or Meeting C++, I find it unlikely that they would be impressed by C++Now.

That's really disappointing because C++Now is *clearly* the best C++ conference, and I can only imagine that not only might it deter attendees, but more importantly, it likely also deters speakers. Based solely on audio/video quality, do you really want a recording of your talk at C++Now to be a related video to a professional quality recording of someone else's talk at another conference? Realistically, this is something that a speaker probably considers, and that's totally understandable.

Given that we tend to sell out each year, the perspective of potential speakers is probably most important. We could *certainly* use more session submissions every year. At this point, we get high enough quality submissions that we succeed with a relatively high acceptance rate, but it's hard to say just how long that can continue. We've lost some regular speakers over the years, and that's fine. We've been lucky enough to have some new, incredible speakers come in too. Still, let's make sure that the high quality speakers out there who have yet to attend have even more of a reason to in the future. If we wait to do this until it's more obviously a problem, then it will already be too late.

I'm unbelievably grateful for all of the hard work that Marshall and the volunteers and everyone else who contributes to the recordings has done over the years. They've done a great job, but I think it's time to get professionals.

[Boris Kolpackov]

Jon Kalb <jon...@boost.org> writes:

> tl;dr Do you want to have professional recording of C++Now sessions?

Yes!

Boris

[Stewart, Robert]

I can think of only one argument against professional videos: it will encourage more people to attend via video rather than in person. So long as we continue to sell out and can charge enough to cover the expenses, that argument is moot. Of course now we have less to justify the S/V role!

 

___

Rob

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[Matt Calabrese]

On Feb 1, 2017 8:40 PM, "Jon Kalb" <jon...@boost.org> wrote:

 tl;dr Do you want to have professional recording of C++Now sessions?

Also related, C++Now is a very... interactive conference. By that I mean some of what makes it great are the discussions that take place during certain sessions between the attendees and the speaker. A talk is often very different from a lecture followed by questions, and that is, in my opinion at least, a good thing, especially given the nature of some of the sessions. Unfortunately this makes it difficult to capture in a video. Frequently you will only hear one side of a conversation (the speaker) and may be somewhat lost as to exactly what is being discussed. Always having the speaker repeat questions helps in some ways, but also has the negative side-effect of killing the momentum of a conversation. It'd be great if we could better capture the experience of a C++Now session seamlessly.

So if we end up getting professionals to do the recordings, they should probably be aware of this dynamic, as they may have a solution that we either haven't thought of or have been unable to implement. I'm thinking anything from a couple of extra mics appropriately placed (possibly difficult in some rooms), or even "crowd-sourced" mic'ing, which I believe someone mentioned last year as a real possibility (someone either described or hypothesized a mobile app that allows individual attendees to record, and the recordings are then automatically synchronized into tracks for editting).

Anyway, I consider this less important than getting professional recordings to begin with, but if it's possible to solve this problem as well, we should probably at least keep it in mind and let whoever does the recording know the situation in advance.

[Michael Caisse]

I'm all for it!

Matt brought up the interactive nature of C++Now which will be a challenge. Let's work with Bash Films and determine how to tackle this. The peer-like discussions are one of the items that make this conference the best I've attended.

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[Robert Ramey]

On 2/2/17 8:14 AM, Michael Caisse wrote:

> Also related, C++Now is a very... interactive conference. By that I
> mean some of what makes it great are the discussions that take place
> during certain sessions between the attendees and the speaker. A
> talk is often very different from a lecture followed by questions,
> and that is, in my opinion at least, a good thing, especially given
> the nature of some of the sessions. Unfortunately this makes it
> difficult to capture in a video. Frequently you will only hear one
> side of a conversation (the speaker) and may be somewhat lost as to
> exactly what is being discussed. Always having the speaker repeat
> questions helps in some ways, but also has the negative side-effect
> of killing the momentum of a conversation. It'd be great if we could
> better capture the experience of a C++Now session seamlessly.

Very good observation that I hadn't thought of.

>
> So if we end up getting professionals to do the recordings, they
> should probably be aware of this dynamic, as they may have a
> solution that we either haven't thought of or have been unable to
> implement. I'm thinking anything from a couple of extra mics
> appropriately placed (possibly difficult in some rooms), or even
> "crowd-sourced" mic'ing, which I believe someone mentioned last year
> as a real possibility (someone either described or hypothesized a
> mobile app that allows individual attendees to record, and the
> recordings are then automatically synchronized into tracks for
> editting).

How about one of the student volunteers with a walk around mic? Also
requiring those with questions to stand and use the mic would be
helpful. Seems very easy to implement and would be a huge help. It
would also help clarify the distinction betwee CPPCon - the general C++
user - and C++Now - the movers and drivers of the future of C++.

C++Now doesn't publish "proceedings" in spite of the attempt to give the
conference sort of an "academic" flavor. The videos are the only record
of what goes on there. So this action is at least several years overdue.

Finally, there should be some investigation of the possibilities of
using the videos as revenue generators for Boost/C++Now. When I look at
youtube videos I often have to see 5 sec of propaganda before I can hit
"skip ad". Though I don't like ads, I consider this a fair exchange for
the value of watching the video. I believe that this would be a
valuable resource to specific advertisers such as tech recruiters,
organizations selling C++ training, special hardware and who knows who
else. I have no idea what the infrastructure that supports this looks
like, but I see it as a useful way to funnel resources into boost which
could be usefully employed. Also the copy rights on the videos should
remain with Boost.

Just some random thoughts.

Robert Ramey

[Jon Kalb]

Rob, Matt, Michael,

 

I’m in complete agreement that from an interactivity point of view, C++Now sessions are a different experience from other conferences (CppCon) and I’ll need to prepare Bash for that. We don’t want to do anything to discourage that and would like to capture it on the videos as much as possible.

 

Related, but superfluous comment. There was a thread on reddit complaining about the interruptions at C++Now. But I’d rather have these complaints from people that “don’t get it” than to lose that important aspect of our conference.

                https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/2cyx9j/cnow_2014_undefined_behavior_in_c_what_is_it_and/

 

Part of the solution may be to have S/Vs standing by with handheld mics. Even if a question is captured on the mic, it should still be repeated for two reasons. One is that people in room, particularly those behind the questioner, may not have heard the question and the second is that having the speaker repeat the question in his or her own words assures the questioner that the speaker understood the question being asked. But as Matt pointed out, this can be a momentum killer if, after the initial question, a dialog or discussion breaks out. In that case having two S/Vs with handheld mics might be better than having the speaker trying to summarize every comment.

 

That solution also addresses Rob’s comment (and Marshall’s comment to me) that we might be over-volunteered if Bash does our recording. I’ve discussed this issue with Bryce. We want the S/Vs to have the best possible experience, but we don’t want to lose sight of why they are there.

 

Jon

 

From: Boost Steering Committee <boost-s...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Michael Caisse <mca...@boost.org>

Reply-To: Boost Steering Committee <boost-s...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, February 2, 2017 at 8:14 AM
To: Boost Steering Committee <boost-s...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: [boost-steering] Re: C++Now Videos: Time to Go Pro?

 

I'm all for it!

Matt brought up the interactive nature of C++Now which will be a challenge. Let's work with Bash Films and determine how to tackle this. The peer-like discussions are one of the items that make this conference the best I've attended.

 

 

 

From: BoostCon Planning Committee <boostc...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Matt Calabrese <riv...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: BoostCon Planning Committee <boostc...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thursday, February 2, 2017 at 8:02 AM
To: BoostCon Planning Committee <boostc...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Bryce Adelstein-Lelbach <br...@cppnow.org>, David Sankel <cam...@gmail.com>, Boost Steering Committee <boost-s...@googlegroups.com>, Marshall Clow <mc...@boost.org>
Subject: Re: C++Now Videos: Time to Go Pro?

 

 

 

On Feb 1, 2017 8:40 PM, "Jon Kalb" <jon...@boost.org> wrote:

 tl;dr Do you want to have professional recording of C++Now sessions?

 

Also related, C++Now is a very... interactive conference. By that I mean some of what makes it great are the discussions that take place during certain sessions between the attendees and the speaker. A talk is often very different from a lecture followed by questions, and that is, in my opinion at least, a good thing, especially given the nature of some of the sessions. Unfortunately this makes it difficult to capture in a video. Frequently you will only hear one side of a conversation (the speaker) and may be somewhat lost as to exactly what is being discussed. Always having the speaker repeat questions helps in some ways, but also has the negative side-effect of killing the momentum of a conversation. It'd be great if we could better capture the experience of a C++Now session seamlessly.

 

So if we end up getting professionals to do the recordings, they should probably be aware of this dynamic, as they may have a solution that we either haven't thought of or have been unable to implement. I'm thinking anything from a couple of extra mics appropriately placed (possibly difficult in some rooms), or even "crowd-sourced" mic'ing, which I believe someone mentioned last year as a real possibility (someone either described or hypothesized a mobile app that allows individual attendees to record, and the recordings are then automatically synchronized into tracks for editting).

 

Anyway, I consider this less important than getting professional recordings to begin with, but if it's possible to solve this problem as well, we should probably at least keep it in mind and let whoever does the recording know the situation in advance.

 

 

 

[Louis Dionne]

On Wednesday, 1 February 2017 17:40:33 UTC-8, Jon Kalb wrote:

 

tl;dr Do you want to have professional recording of C++Now sessions?

 

I think going professional is a great idea and the conference will benefit massively from this.

However, I hope this does not kill the SV program. This program is a great port of entry for students into the community. I think the C++ community and the conference have benefited a lot from this program, and it would be sad to see it go or scaled down significantly.

Louis

[Zach Laine]

On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 7:40 PM, Jon Kalb <jon...@boost.org> wrote:

 

tl;dr Do you want to have professional recording of C++Now sessions?

 

Yes.  (This seems to be a popular opinion.) 

Zach

[Bryce Lelbach]

On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 5:40 PM, Jon Kalb <jon...@boost.org> wrote:
>
>
> tl;dr Do you want to have professional recording of C++Now sessions?

Yes.

--
Bryce Adelstein Lelbach aka wash
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
ISO C++ Committee Member
CppCon and C++Now Program Chair
--
Nocturnal Language Lawyer
--

[Bryce Lelbach]

On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 7:22 AM, Stewart, Robert <Robert....@sig.com> wrote:
> I can think of only one argument against professional videos: it will
> encourage more people to attend via video rather than in person. So long as
> we continue to sell out and can charge enough to cover the expenses, that
> argument is moot.

It is worth noting that we didn't have as much of a registration rush
last year as we've typically had. If that trend continues, we'd have
to reassess. I'm hopeful that we'll sell out this year.

> Of course now we have less to justify the S/V role!

Yep, this will significantly change the S/V workload. We will still
need an S/V in every session to make sure the speaker is aware of how
much time they have left and remind speakers to repeat questions, just
like at CppCon.

This will help ensure that other S/V tasks, like helping Patty with
the breaks, go smoother. It'll also mean the S/Vs have more
availability to run between rooms to report problems, help speakers
get their laptops connected, etc.

[Bryce Lelbach]

On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 12:31 PM, Bryce Lelbach <bale...@lbl.gov> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 2, 2017 at 7:22 AM, Stewart, Robert <Robert....@sig.com> wrote:
>> I can think of only one argument against professional videos: it will
>> encourage more people to attend via video rather than in person.

On this point - I'm not worried about this because I think a large
part of the audience will watch the videos regardless of quality and
would be unable/unwilling to attend in person.

[Bryce Lelbach]

I don't think anyone wants to see that happen, and we're planning to
run the program as we typically would this year.

[mca...@ciere.com]

On Thursday, February 2, 2017 at 11:36:34 AM UTC-8, Louis Dionne wrote:

I think going professional is a great idea and the conference will benefit massively from this.

However, I hope this does not kill the SV program. This program is a great port of entry for students into the community. I think the C++ community and the conference have benefited a lot from this program, and it would be sad to see it go or scaled down significantly.

Louis

I have been involved with the SV program since its inception and our company was a sponsor of it from the beginning. I pushed hard to have a SV program not so we can have people running around taking videos but so we could engage smart students with the amazing community that shows up at Aspen. If all they had to do was mingle with other attendees, participate in sessions, and hold up timing signs, I would be perfectly happy. I'm certain that Patty will find something else for them to do.

michael