On the particular point of cutting the number of sessions you record, I wanted to quickly mention:
1. You say that the videos have few views, but maybe that is also due to a lack of advertisement? I recall finding the Youtube channel after having been involved in EA for quite a bit—nobody had ever mentioned it to me as a good source of info. Now I’m a regular viewer (see also point 2). 2. I have the cached heuristic that you record most of the content on the primary+secondary stages, which I believe reduces quite a bit of my FOMO, so probably not having the anticipated recordings to watch later would make me have a couple fewer 1on1s, to be able to watch the talks live. Not sure how common this is, but should maybe be a factor in the calculation of (impact) cost. 3. The videos are also particularly useful for staying kind of up to date with things that are not in my immediate cause areas. These talks do not cross my bar for impact to attend at the event directly (because they likely won’t guide any actions of mine), but are great to watch over dinner to not feel like I’m becoming an “AI-EA”, but instead still engaged with other parts of the community.
(as an independent aside, fwiw, the cost category that has the highest delta to my expectations, in relative terms, are the 100k Printing and signage costs. The maps are always really professional and pretty, sure, but wow!)
It is true that we haven’t advertised our content much and could possibly get more views if we did. We are planning to do more here, but we estimated that we’d have to really get a lot more views for it to be worth it (recording each stage costs ~$50k) and we expect we won’t succeed in getting the videos that much exposure.
And we considered your second (and third to some extent) points when making a decision here but still concluded we should cut back at this time.
Re the printing and signage — I’ll note that EAG London was something of an outlier here because the venue we used is a Grade I listed building (i.e. a building designated of architectural/historical interest and hence worthy of protection). This meant that we couldn’t stick anything on any of the walls and so we had to spend more money on other types of free-standing signage.
Also, one other thing we’re thinking about here is trying to memorialize content in other (cheaper) ways, like having the talks written up as Forum posts.
Coming from the “Chaos”, the recording quality on media.ccc.de for bigger events is often higher than that of EAG(x) recordings. (E.g. small details like normalizing / boosting audio levels.) That makes a large difference in the “watchability” of recordings.
I agree that the talks being recorded has a huge impact on my behavior during events – e.g. at CCC events, if a talk is being recorded I generally don’t bother trying to go there in person unless I’m really interested. Watching it later at home is easy / possibly more convenient than at the event (no standing in line, no crowd noise in the room, known good recording quality), while talking to the people at the con can’t really happen later. (E.g. at the last Chaos Communication Camp just a few weeks ago, I checked the schedule ahead of time, picked 4 events for “maybe live attendance”, then went to none. By my current estimate, I’ll probably watch about 20-30% of the recordings over the next weeks / months at least partially – don’t have to stay / keep watching if I’m not interested.)
Zoom is not a good way to record talks. (Compressed audio and bad picture quality / often just using a cheap webcam makes for a bad experience. I often have trouble understanding low-quality recordings or streams, and might as well skip that.)
Small changes in any one category can make a huge difference in the result – so e.g. even with a good camera, not enough light will produce bad results. (See e.g. this recording – knowledgeable people, good equipment, etc., but not enough light in the room. Grainy image, looks slightly blurry even if properly focused. Throwing a bunch of extra lights in the room would fix it, but we didn’t get around to it yet… there’s other more pressing problems.)
So even if you go the “no live talks in person” route and skip big halls, you do want a decent recording studio. (Good light, sane sound design, proper equipment, one or two people that know what they’re doing.) Having your own team (like the VOC at CCC events) is good for consistency (same people, same setup, very similar quality results) and can make sense if there’s sufficiently many things to record. Not sure if EA is already in that category, probably hiring local A/V techs & equip per event is still cheaper.
Hi Eli, thanks for this update.
On the particular point of cutting the number of sessions you record, I wanted to quickly mention:
1. You say that the videos have few views, but maybe that is also due to a lack of advertisement? I recall finding the Youtube channel after having been involved in EA for quite a bit—nobody had ever mentioned it to me as a good source of info. Now I’m a regular viewer (see also point 2).
2. I have the cached heuristic that you record most of the content on the primary+secondary stages, which I believe reduces quite a bit of my FOMO, so probably not having the anticipated recordings to watch later would make me have a couple fewer 1on1s, to be able to watch the talks live. Not sure how common this is, but should maybe be a factor in the calculation of (impact) cost.
3. The videos are also particularly useful for staying kind of up to date with things that are not in my immediate cause areas. These talks do not cross my bar for impact to attend at the event directly (because they likely won’t guide any actions of mine), but are great to watch over dinner to not feel like I’m becoming an “AI-EA”, but instead still engaged with other parts of the community.
(as an independent aside, fwiw, the cost category that has the highest delta to my expectations, in relative terms, are the 100k Printing and signage costs. The maps are always really professional and pretty, sure, but wow!)
Thanks for your thoughts here!
It is true that we haven’t advertised our content much and could possibly get more views if we did. We are planning to do more here, but we estimated that we’d have to really get a lot more views for it to be worth it (recording each stage costs ~$50k) and we expect we won’t succeed in getting the videos that much exposure.
And we considered your second (and third to some extent) points when making a decision here but still concluded we should cut back at this time.
Re the printing and signage — I’ll note that EAG London was something of an outlier here because the venue we used is a Grade I listed building (i.e. a building designated of architectural/historical interest and hence worthy of protection). This meant that we couldn’t stick anything on any of the walls and so we had to spend more money on other types of free-standing signage.
Also, one other thing we’re thinking about here is trying to memorialize content in other (cheaper) ways, like having the talks written up as Forum posts.
Coming from the “Chaos”, the recording quality on media.ccc.de for bigger events is often higher than that of EAG(x) recordings. (E.g. small details like normalizing / boosting audio levels.) That makes a large difference in the “watchability” of recordings.
I agree that the talks being recorded has a huge impact on my behavior during events – e.g. at CCC events, if a talk is being recorded I generally don’t bother trying to go there in person unless I’m really interested. Watching it later at home is easy / possibly more convenient than at the event (no standing in line, no crowd noise in the room, known good recording quality), while talking to the people at the con can’t really happen later. (E.g. at the last Chaos Communication Camp just a few weeks ago, I checked the schedule ahead of time, picked 4 events for “maybe live attendance”, then went to none. By my current estimate, I’ll probably watch about 20-30% of the recordings over the next weeks / months at least partially – don’t have to stay / keep watching if I’m not interested.)
I too agree that recording the talks is great, and affects behaviour.
One way to save costs could be to record the talks ahead of time (on Zoom). Reduce the costs of huge halls and recording infra in one go!
Zoom is not a good way to record talks. (Compressed audio and bad picture quality / often just using a cheap webcam makes for a bad experience. I often have trouble understanding low-quality recordings or streams, and might as well skip that.)
Small changes in any one category can make a huge difference in the result – so e.g. even with a good camera, not enough light will produce bad results. (See e.g. this recording – knowledgeable people, good equipment, etc., but not enough light in the room. Grainy image, looks slightly blurry even if properly focused. Throwing a bunch of extra lights in the room would fix it, but we didn’t get around to it yet… there’s other more pressing problems.)
So even if you go the “no live talks in person” route and skip big halls, you do want a decent recording studio. (Good light, sane sound design, proper equipment, one or two people that know what they’re doing.) Having your own team (like the VOC at CCC events) is good for consistency (same people, same setup, very similar quality results) and can make sense if there’s sufficiently many things to record. Not sure if EA is already in that category, probably hiring local A/V techs & equip per event is still cheaper.