I can think of only one argument against professional videos: it will encourage more people to attend via video rather than in person. So long as we continue to sell out and can charge enough to cover the expenses, that argument is moot. Of course now we have less to justify the S/V role!
___ Rob From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jon Kalb Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2017 8:40 PM To: Boost Steering Committee <[email protected]>; Marshall Clow <[email protected]>; David Sankel <[email protected]>; BoostCon Planning Committee <[email protected]>; Bryce Adelstein-Lelbach <[email protected]> Subject: C++Now Videos: Time to Go Pro? tl;dr Do you want to have professional recording of C++Now sessions? Boost Steering Committee, C++Now Planning Committee, Marshall (Recording Chair), Bryce (S/V Chair), Some background: Conference Chair Spending Authority During the face-to-face Steering Committee meeting at C++Now in 2012, I asked the Steering Committee for guidelines about what kinds of conference related expenses I, as C++Now Conference Chair, needed to get Steering Committee approval for. The answer was that the Steering Committee gave me authorization to approve expenses for the conference with two conditions: 1. The conference would still be projected to run in the black 2. There was no obligation of an on-going expense (continuing into future years) In my opinion, this has served us well as I can make conference related decisions quickly and we’ve come to learn that getting SC approval in a timely manner is a non-trivial issue. Note that the S/V program originally fell under these conditions because it originally didn’t include us paying expenses for the S/Vs. We do cover most of those expenses now, but that was separately approved by the Steering Committee. Conference Sponsorships I’ve unilaterally followed the guideline that when developing the spending plan for the conference, I’ve not included sponsorship money. The practice has always been that the attendees, not sponsors, pay for the conference and that all sponsorship money goes directly to the Boost treasury. This works for two reasons: 1. I don’t have to worry about whether we have sponsorship money before, for example, planning the picnic. 2. This allows Boost to accumulate funds to do things which the community wants to fund (such as S/V expenses, BSoC, purchase of testing hardware). This has also worked well. Even though our Sponsorship situation has varied from year to year, the conference has run smoothly and Boost has accumulated funds. Professional Recording This year I want to do something that might change this pattern. We have a quote from Bash Films, the company that does the recording, editing, and uploading of session videos for CppCon. For $18,500 Bash will record, edit, and upload all three C++Now tracks (60-65 videos). In anticipation of recording a single track, we have raised the registration fee for C++Now 2017 by $100. This will increase the pre-Sponsorship revenue of the conference by about $10K which I had expected to apply to paying Bash to record a single track. Bash’s quotes for a single track and for all three tracks this year are significantly less expensive than their quote from a few years ago. (Part of the reason for this is that they have become more cost effective and part of it is that they have an event in Denver that is time-adjacent to C++Now and they can save on travel.) This means that recording a track can be covered by the registration rate increase alone and recording all three tracks is within our means. Aspen Institute Permission One issue with recording all three tracks is that in the past, the Aspen Institute has let us know that they would permit us to record our sessions in Peapcke and Hudson, only if we were doing it ourselves, but if we were to have professionals do this, they would expect us to use their techs. At the rates that the Institute charges for AV services, this would be prohibitively expensive. After receiving Bash’s quote on doing all three tracks, I’ve pressed the Institute on this and they have given permission to allow us to use Bash Films for our sessions at their venue. Advantages I want to thank Marshall and the S/Vs of each year for all their work in recording, editing, and uploading. My gratitude is sincere and is not diminished by the fact that I think having Bash do this work for us would have several advantages. · The quality of the recording would be better o The venue, particularly Flug, is a challenging one to record at and professionals will be better able to deal with these issues. · The editing will be much better o If you’ve not seen what Bash does with the CppCon videos, you really need to check that out. They picture-in-picture the speaker in a tiny window to make the slides large and legible. For the slides, they capture the direct video output and do not reply on pointing a camera at the screen. Here is an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGu9XWsOgWQ · The upload time will be very much better o We’ll be able to have the videos in our YouTube channel within weeks (perhaps one or two) of the conference instead of months. · It frees up time for Marshall and the S/V to spend less time worrying about and tracking cameras and memory drives and more time participating in the conference. There is also an important advantage to having all of the tracks done by Bash, so that we don’t have to deal with speakers that push very strongly to be in Flug just because they’ll have a better recording and we don’t have to explain to the community why some videos are up right away and some are going to be delayed. Future Years Having Bash record sessions this year does not obligate us to do the same in future years (although it will set a quality bar that we’ll not want to fall below). This year is a very good year for this for two reasons. One is that, due to a Bash event in Denver, we are getting a better quote than we are likely to get in future years. Another reason is that we are having a very good sponsorship year this year. (It looks like we’ll be over $13K in sponsorships for C++Now 2017.) I am optimistic that we can do well in future years, but, of course, there are no guarantees. Summary Although having Bash record all three sessions is technically something I can authorize myself (the conference will still be in the black and there is no future obligation), I wanted to consult with the Steering Committee about this because it is a very large expense and it does set a precedence, if not an obligation, for future conferences. I also want to get thoughts from the planning committee. For this kind of money, we could probably have steaks and Champaign at the picnic. Is this a good use of conference money? Mark Bashian, the owner of Bash Films is current travelling and will be contacting me when he returns in a couple of weeks. Currently, my plan is to tell him that we want all three tracks recorded, but I’ll reconsider that there are strong negative comments. Please share your thoughts. Jon ________________________________ IMPORTANT: The information contained in this email and/or its attachments is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately by reply and immediately delete this message and all its attachments. Any review, use, reproduction, disclosure or dissemination of this message or any attachment by an unintended recipient is strictly prohibited. Neither this message nor any attachment is intended as or should be construed as an offer, solicitation or recommendation to buy or sell any security or other financial instrument. 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