Zootella
July 24th, 2006, 03:48 AM
In the combined spirits of Open Source Software and Reality Television, I'm putting this on the forums instead of e-mailing it to everyone.
Editing Thursday Footage
Is it a reasonable goal to use this week to digitize and edit together all the footage we shot on Thursday? We should concentrate on this instead of starting or planning any other project.
The first thing I'm interested to see is the tom-mark conversation. One way to cut it together would be to just switch between cameras a and b, for the most interesting shot. Then, we can figure out if we should edit the conversation tighter or just ship it like that.
Blogging Thursday Footage
In addition to videos, the multiple, multi-directional interviews we did on Thursday can generate a lot of blog entries (for us) and stories (for tom). Can we output MP3s of just the audio track of each interview segment? Nathan - Your interview of Tom (talking about the early days) would make a great blog entry before it also becomes a video. My guess is that Tom could also be helped by audio tracks of what happened.
DHT and BitTorrent Videos
I need to devote several days this week to the DHT and BitTorrent videos. They're two of our more technically-oriented projects, and absolutely on-topic. When Tom was here, Mark K. asked him, How technical should this stuff be? How technical are your readers? The answer was: very technical. Also, Mark has said the primary purpose of all the editorial work we do is to attract more open source contributors. Technical and instructional videos help this goal.
So, I have a lot of work to do on these two videos. I need a draftsman's style piece of paper for the DHT video. I want to shoot something across the street from the ghostbusters firehouse - hopefully a one-on-one with zab. I'll ask really, really nicely tomorrow.
Interview Microphone
To everyone's surprise, filming at the party on Thursday worked really well. I think it helped that everyone was a little drunk. I also think it helped that we were using a handheld interview-style microphone. Everyone knows what to expect from it - it's like a doctors stethoscope. Anyway, we need to buy one. We're borrowing the one we're using from someone, right?
Filming Every Day
Also this week, I want to start a rule where we film every day. Even if some days, it's just turning on the camera, one of us looking into it, saying "We'll, nothing happened today," and turning it off, that's good enough. Actually though, we'll probably carry the camera around and see who seems to be doing something remotely interesting. This will get us fast with the camera - necessary to be ready for some sort of sudden event. It will also get everyone used to the camera. After a week or two of this, the camera will seem commonplace. This is probably a good opportunity to use the interview mic also - people seem totally freaked out by the boom.
Food Co-op
We have to get the food co-op video out the door early this week. It's a teaser, and soon we're going to be started and teasers will seem out of place.
Media Room
With the screen built and the projector on the bookshelf, the media room is functional. Thursday partygoers enjoyed playing Mario Kart and watching the most awesomest movie ever (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421121/). Here's my possibly clever and completely secret plan to push the setup to completion: start LimeWire movie night now. On Monday, we can e-mail everyone inviting them to Sneakers on Thursday night. Then, people will say "wow, this is a cool idea, but we need to actually get speakers better than the ones that come free with a new Dell." If it's the consensus of the group, not just us asking for stuff, it will work better.
Even before that, I need to hook up a computer to the projector. We need to subscribe it to the video podcasts we're using as example material. I need to find a little desk and chair so someone can sit back there and control it in instances where we're checking out something on the Web, also.
Narrowing Focus
Initially, the list of topics that were on-topic was this:
-LimeWire
-Open Source Software Development
-P2P File Sharing
-Creative Commons
I listed these four to Mark last week, and his response was, actually, just make it about Open Source. LimeWire is by default on topic, and I don't want to loose the broader issues of p2p file sharing and the surrounding conflict. Looking at the list that way, Creative Commons is starting to look borderline. I'm thinking we should focus almost exclusively on P2P and Open Source. This moves us further down the long tail, which is possibly a good thing, and also better targets our purpose of getting coders and contributors. Thoughts?
Editing Thursday Footage
Is it a reasonable goal to use this week to digitize and edit together all the footage we shot on Thursday? We should concentrate on this instead of starting or planning any other project.
The first thing I'm interested to see is the tom-mark conversation. One way to cut it together would be to just switch between cameras a and b, for the most interesting shot. Then, we can figure out if we should edit the conversation tighter or just ship it like that.
Blogging Thursday Footage
In addition to videos, the multiple, multi-directional interviews we did on Thursday can generate a lot of blog entries (for us) and stories (for tom). Can we output MP3s of just the audio track of each interview segment? Nathan - Your interview of Tom (talking about the early days) would make a great blog entry before it also becomes a video. My guess is that Tom could also be helped by audio tracks of what happened.
DHT and BitTorrent Videos
I need to devote several days this week to the DHT and BitTorrent videos. They're two of our more technically-oriented projects, and absolutely on-topic. When Tom was here, Mark K. asked him, How technical should this stuff be? How technical are your readers? The answer was: very technical. Also, Mark has said the primary purpose of all the editorial work we do is to attract more open source contributors. Technical and instructional videos help this goal.
So, I have a lot of work to do on these two videos. I need a draftsman's style piece of paper for the DHT video. I want to shoot something across the street from the ghostbusters firehouse - hopefully a one-on-one with zab. I'll ask really, really nicely tomorrow.
Interview Microphone
To everyone's surprise, filming at the party on Thursday worked really well. I think it helped that everyone was a little drunk. I also think it helped that we were using a handheld interview-style microphone. Everyone knows what to expect from it - it's like a doctors stethoscope. Anyway, we need to buy one. We're borrowing the one we're using from someone, right?
Filming Every Day
Also this week, I want to start a rule where we film every day. Even if some days, it's just turning on the camera, one of us looking into it, saying "We'll, nothing happened today," and turning it off, that's good enough. Actually though, we'll probably carry the camera around and see who seems to be doing something remotely interesting. This will get us fast with the camera - necessary to be ready for some sort of sudden event. It will also get everyone used to the camera. After a week or two of this, the camera will seem commonplace. This is probably a good opportunity to use the interview mic also - people seem totally freaked out by the boom.
Food Co-op
We have to get the food co-op video out the door early this week. It's a teaser, and soon we're going to be started and teasers will seem out of place.
Media Room
With the screen built and the projector on the bookshelf, the media room is functional. Thursday partygoers enjoyed playing Mario Kart and watching the most awesomest movie ever (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421121/). Here's my possibly clever and completely secret plan to push the setup to completion: start LimeWire movie night now. On Monday, we can e-mail everyone inviting them to Sneakers on Thursday night. Then, people will say "wow, this is a cool idea, but we need to actually get speakers better than the ones that come free with a new Dell." If it's the consensus of the group, not just us asking for stuff, it will work better.
Even before that, I need to hook up a computer to the projector. We need to subscribe it to the video podcasts we're using as example material. I need to find a little desk and chair so someone can sit back there and control it in instances where we're checking out something on the Web, also.
Narrowing Focus
Initially, the list of topics that were on-topic was this:
-LimeWire
-Open Source Software Development
-P2P File Sharing
-Creative Commons
I listed these four to Mark last week, and his response was, actually, just make it about Open Source. LimeWire is by default on topic, and I don't want to loose the broader issues of p2p file sharing and the surrounding conflict. Looking at the list that way, Creative Commons is starting to look borderline. I'm thinking we should focus almost exclusively on P2P and Open Source. This moves us further down the long tail, which is possibly a good thing, and also better targets our purpose of getting coders and contributors. Thoughts?