I have previously offered to be forth-coming with the digitized video capture of various conference series including Ottawa LInux Symposium 2006. Such videos include Xelerence/MCR's OpenCrypto and some Virtualization and Vendor talks. How time flies.. If anyone wants to rescue these for a nominal amount (my exepenses) then please do email me in the next day(s) or ASAP. -- I am currently quite happily employed in my day job with operations in the Ottawa area and appreciate the efforts of those keeping OCLUG going. My current situation is, I need cash and am willing to part with assets and/or non-essentials to free up storage space, instead of them just sitting there (or before it all gets chucked.) When there were good times.. I spent some cash converting digital-8 tapes to DVD with the goal of getting them into streamable MP4 (2 done) and have a bunch of dvd masters waiting to be published including numerous talks and general proceedings. I have not reviewed or edited them, except for a quick glance over some: showing video is clear and audio quality is quite acceptable. My original intent was to capture the event(s) so that it could be reviewed by the same community involved in the event afterward (persistence of memory). I have already put hundreds toward this project totalling 15-20 DVDs worth, across multiple conferences including BSDCan 2004,2007 and PgCon 2007 (SITE). You can buy which ever you fancy of OLS2006 (Congress Centre), or I prefer the entire lot goes to the conference organizers (xchg for my expenses). One copy only, once the master is sold, it's gone. - Provided I make out well with rent/expenses for this month, I would consider simply donating them with-out charge. (Hint: not.) Otherwise, they may all simply disappear into a trash dumpster including other assets of mine. No joke. "Limited time offer. Act now!" haha. (*) Help preserve the archives -or- better yet, take them over: 1. I propose a "show and sell" at GOSLING were I quickly seek over DVD (sample) and they buy it if they want the proceeding. 2. Otherwise, someone may meet me at the mall with a their laptop perhaps. Consider this like a bake sale with DVDs. All it takes is a burner, some time and some small unmarked bills. Then a percentage can go back to the conference or oclug. -or- 3. You can have them all for the price it cost me, no questions asked. That was one of my original plans to sell them back to the conference rather than trying to publish them myself as I've done in the past for BSDCan2004 when I still had my colo. ============ Further Ideas: ------------ = Ability to review presentations: Those that were speaking or could not attend one track, can tune into another they original missed it, with the video proceedings. = Privacy concerns with video proceedings: One idea I had was to blur the faces in the audience like in Police videos, but that would only increase the production cost. In vegas I could get my videographer license and equipment taken away for publicizing faces of the crowd. The speaker is always volunteering to be photographed / taped when they get up and present to the public. But if I attended and got Podcat to the world, could they make me anonymous except to those who have a "paid" pass / original attendies. = Quality: (They simply got digitized as-is; so in some cases the camera pans smoothly from speaker, to the presentation or audience, then back again -- disorenting or a helpful perspective? In lecture tapings, what they usually do is have 1 or 2 cameras fixed. Mine were on a tri-pod however, so it's not that shakey.) = Completeness: Some editing necessary. In some cases they start and stop on different DVDs and have large amounts of commentary/discussion after the talk. Most slides are visible, but there are no corresponding PDF versions on the DVD. Audio could be normalized or over-tracked. = Pay-wall / original authorship: The copyright may lie jointly with the speakers and the confreence organizers. However, this could be either released as Creative Commons (CC) or made accessible to members who have paid for the event, for later review - much as USENIX charges a nominal membership fee for some proceedings following conferences. Perhaps an access code could be issued to attendees to ensure people pay for the event, even if they attend via video-proceedings. This would help the conference organizers with ensuring future events are optimally profitable. If the critical mass was reached, then the pay-wall could be torn down, allowing the commons access, such as a certain time after the original event -or- they could increase in value after the event depending on how popular the request is with an amount going to speaker. An option could be given to speakers, sans a total free online publication (CC) that they could distribute their own video proceeding in their site. Personally, I would not use YouTube, but would use a local server to serve it up. That's just my preference. -- (*)-If anyone is interesting, I was forced to leave a prior job of 3 years and move on to a new position this last election. That takes its financial toll even for a mighty single-consultant corporation such as mine, especially after cut-backs and between jobs when one has to live on savings and credit absent any severance-- and I was full-time. Regards, --- Allan Fields Himeji Systems, Inc. Email: allan [ dot ] fields [ at ] gmail [ dot ] com (Sent via OLPC text-browser gmail w/ mouse)