I record the monthly presentations at the Inland Empire .Net Users Group. I’m half way done developing the distribution area for our groups website. This is taking a while because I have no free time! J/K, I’m also guilty of putting in the kitchen sink. I’m creating it so that users will have a single place for all session content including a Silverlight player for video, access to downloads such as slides and code as well as ratings and content. Will be nice, if I ever get it done!
Anyway, back to the topic. Is anyone interested in recorded sessions of Code Camp? I know I sure am. There are so many sessions by so many great speakers that it is impossible to see them all. Why not record them and make them available after the show?
I’ve volunteered to Lynn Langit and Daniel Egan, who I know have vested interest in Code Camp, to do the work. I just need funding for the resources. It’s not expensive, but it’s not trivial either. The setup I currently use for our IE .Net sessions is a VGA frame grabber from Epiphan (great equipment!), a wireless mic and my laptop. That’s it. Turns out when I went to the ESRI User Conference in San Diego they do the exact same thing, although they use Macs and a few mixers since they also have PA systems for the presenters. They sell their week’s worth of presentation recordings on DVD’s for ~$400. I’d like to make this content freely available for viewing on the web much like PDC.
This would be relatively easy. I could get a few bodies to help set up and keep things running smoothly.
Code Camp 2009 has at most 9 simultaneous sessions. Assuming this doesn’t grow I’d need to purchase and put together 9 recording “kits”. If we went the “inexpensive” route, without any vendors kicking in free or discounted gear, we could probably build a kit for a little less than $1,000. This would be for the frame grabber (VGA2USB model), a decent but inexpensive laptop, wireless mic and miscellaneous cabling gear. We’d get 5-10 frames per second at 1024×768, which for 95% of the presentations would be adequate. So, we’re looking at the need to finance ~$10k of equipment allowing for one spare. Any takers? 🙂
matt, i totally agree with you, which is why i started talking to the code camp organizers 6 months ago about it. i looked at epiphan, and i’m developing an alternative. i’ve gotten the blessings of woody pewitt, dan egan, and art villa. stay tuned for my method!
Hey John,
Thanks for letting me know. I’d like to hear your alternative. Drop me a line if you would like to work together on this.