Watch the 2009 Linux Plumbers Conference (Linux.com)

Posted Oct 9, 2009 16:15 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
Parent article: Watch the 2009 Linux Plumbers Conference (Linux.com)

Again, lousy work.

Slides are NOT visible during the talks, so very often it makes hard to understand what the speaker is talking about.

to post comments

Watch the 2009 Linux Plumbers Conference (Linux.com)

Posted Oct 9, 2009 17:18 UTC (Fri) by jreiser (subscriber, #11027) [Link] (1 responses)

Slides for many of the talks have been available for almost two weeks. Yes, you have to download separately and run a separate program, but that makes it easier for you to turn pages when you want to, adjust the viewing panes separately, annotate and/or print selected pages, etc.

Watch the 2009 Linux Plumbers Conference (Linux.com)

Posted Oct 10, 2009 20:33 UTC (Sat) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Sorta. There are some problems,

- A there are no slides for a lot of talks.
- The talkers don't announce what slide they are on, usually, which makes it difficult to know that is currently being shown.
- When they point at stuff it is hard to see what they are pointing at.
- If the slides are visable in the video then that does not stop the positive benefits of having the slides that you mentioned.

----------------------------

Don't take it wrong, though. The sound quality is good and the video quality is excellent. Which takes it a step above typical videos of this type. So Kudos for that.

Watch the 2009 Linux Plumbers Conference (Linux.com)

Posted Oct 9, 2009 20:12 UTC (Fri) by niv (guest, #8656) [Link] (10 responses)

Sorry you were disappointed, it's not great.

However, to do really reasonable recording of the talks including the slides would have required 2 cameras or switching back and forth a lot between the speaker and the screen. The editing in of slides into the video would also have been a signficant additional cost.

So for most of the talks, our guideline was to get the speakers and discussion, and we would make the slides available (they are just static content, after all) separately along with the video. I think for most of the talks, this was a reasonable compromise.

This, of course, wasn't so hot for demos and stuff done on the fly as the git tutorial was (and we didn't know upfront). I think the git talk was the one we could rescued - could have tried to get the camera guy to swing around - but I didn't think of it, to be honest, at the time.

--nivedita

Watch the 2009 Linux Plumbers Conference (Linux.com)

Posted Oct 9, 2009 20:47 UTC (Fri) by BenHutchings (subscriber, #37955) [Link] (3 responses)

I realise it takes more people and equipment to do this, but it's not that expensive and it doesn't require hiring professionals. Please have a look at DVswitch, which I wrote for DebConf and which has been used at several other conferences.

Watch the 2009 Linux Plumbers Conference (Linux.com)

Posted Oct 9, 2009 21:59 UTC (Fri) by niv (guest, #8656) [Link] (2 responses)

Thanks for the pointer, Ben! Looks cool.

So if we did one room - we'd need two video camera feeds and two volunteers to move them around as needed? What were your hardware requirements, especially storage? Was a camcorder sufficiently good quality video?

Will put it on the list for next year's team to look at, for sure.

Note, though, that LPC is a developer-run conference - by developers, for developers. Not quite as slick as a professionally run conference (it's not actually a Linux Foundation event - they just assist us on some things). So we're sometimes constrained by our volunteer focus and budget limitations.

BTW, do you have slides for your BoF session, or any notes or summary that you'd like to have us put up on the Program page? :).

Watch the 2009 Linux Plumbers Conference (Linux.com)

Posted Oct 15, 2009 13:26 UTC (Thu) by BenHutchings (subscriber, #37955) [Link]

so if we did one room - we'd need two video camera feeds and two volunteers to move them around as needed? What were your hardware requirements, especially storage? Was a camcorder sufficiently good quality video?

Two cameras and three volunteers (one per camera and one for the mixer). DV is 13GB/hour, so ~100GB/day/room. We've mostly used consumer camcorders but sometimes had the use of 1 "prosumer" camera. More information on the wiki.

Note, though, that LPC is a developer-run conference - by developers, for developers. Not quite as slick as a professionally run conference (it's not actually a Linux Foundation event - they just assist us on some things). So we're sometimes constrained by our volunteer focus and budget limitations.

Same for DebConf.

BTW, do you have slides for your BoF session, or any notes or summary that you'd like to have us put up on the Program page? :)

No, there's nothing beyond the list of items included in the description.

Watch the 2009 Linux Plumbers Conference (Linux.com)

Posted Oct 15, 2009 13:32 UTC (Thu) by amk (subscriber, #19) [Link]

The PyCon 2009 video recordings (available at pycon.blip.tv) were made by voulnteers using DVswitch, with foundation support for purchasing equipment. This tutorial was written from the PyCon experience.

Cutting between the slides and the speaker was done on-the-fly during the talk; the resulting edits are occasionally sub-optimal, but doing this avoids requiring an enormous mass of editing work once the event is over, which is when all the volunteers are tired and burnt out.

Watch the 2009 Linux Plumbers Conference (Linux.com)

Posted Oct 9, 2009 21:52 UTC (Fri) by cota (subscriber, #60184) [Link] (5 responses)

You could have done it with a single camera, Example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzIWdJVP-wo

btw, a few screenshots from the tutorial are available here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/dkukawka/LinusTorvaldsGitTuto...

Watch the 2009 Linux Plumbers Conference (Linux.com)

Posted Oct 9, 2009 21:55 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (2 responses)

No doubt the Plumbers organizers could have done a lot of things better. But they worked their asses off and put together a top-quality conference, which is what they set out to do. I wish there were a few more comments saying "thanks, Plumbers folks!" and a few fewer complaints...

Watch the 2009 Linux Plumbers Conference (Linux.com)

Posted Oct 11, 2009 21:20 UTC (Sun) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]

The problem with humanity is that we take things that work for granted, and when something doesn't work it stands out, and we like to complain about it. In a way it's not that bad, since the best way to improve oneself is to fix what is wrong more so than concentrating on what is right.

But that said, I was there for only one day, unfortunately, and I thought they did an excellent job. Plumbers concentrates on developers (both kernel and userspace), and they do a good job at keeping that focused. Plumbers is still very new, and there's lots of places that they can improve on. But what they have accomplished so far, is worthy of compliments. Kudos to Plumbers and those that worked it.

Exactly

Posted Oct 11, 2009 23:01 UTC (Sun) by jamesmrh (guest, #31622) [Link]

I'd have to say that the whole week, from the co-located LinuxCon events, to LinuxCon itself, and LPC, was amazingly well organized and executed overall, probably the best I've seen (or at least on par with LCA).

I hope that what we're seeing here is a case of most people being happy and not having to say anything, with a small minority of people commenting who simply don't understand what it takes to make anything like this work at all, let alone exceptionally well.

Watch the 2009 Linux Plumbers Conference (Linux.com)

Posted Oct 9, 2009 22:06 UTC (Fri) by niv (guest, #8656) [Link] (1 responses)

That, to avoid confusion, is Linus's first Linux Plumber's Conference Git Tutorial, i.e. circa 2008. Sadly, the Plumbers videotape of the event didn't actually survive, so note that we at least improved over the previous year in that this year's video is actually extant :).

This year's talk was hence billed as an "Advanced git tutorial".

Watch the 2009 Linux Plumbers Conference (Linux.com)

Posted Oct 10, 2009 12:18 UTC (Sat) by cota (subscriber, #60184) [Link]

oops, sorry for the confusion, thanks for the clarification.

Great ideas

Posted Oct 11, 2009 22:28 UTC (Sun) by jamesmrh (guest, #31622) [Link]

Perhaps you could volunteer to ensure that the videos are up to your standards for the next LPC.

IIRC, it'll be in Boston around the same time next year.