All posts by Deirdre Straughan

Videoblogging Tips: Getting Good Sound at a Conference

This week I trained four of my Sun colleagues in videoblogging. It was very hands-on training, with the intent that they actually produce a finished video by the end of the two-day course.

We started with setting up the cameras and mics right away, and I had them practice following an active speaker (me, imitating Jeff Bonwick’s pacing). I wasn’t really thinking about the fact that they were filming me, so I was completely unself-conscious. Which was good in some ways, not so good in others. But some of the material may be useful for videobloggers in general, so I’m editing and posting it in spite of what seems to be inordinate emphasis on my chest.

An OpenSolaris Shirt for Women!

Tired of those baggy, boy-cut t-shirts we all get at conferences, Teresa Giacomini decided to do a run of OpenSolaris shirts for women. Much more flattering to the female figure. Want one? Well, they were very popular and went fast (lots of women in OpenSolaris). Join your local OpenSolaris User Group – maybe they have a few left. ; )

Videoblogging for Sun: Numbers Update

Recently realized that a dumb spreadsheet error (mine) was causing a serious undercount in the total views of my videos. My video stats for 2009 now read:

  • 100 hours of video shot to date (and more to come before the year ends)
  • 35 hours of video edited (mostly by me) and available (some of it only internally)
  • ~16 events/locations shot

Total cumulative views on all "my" videos through the end of October is 88,672.

Technologies & topics covered have included ZFS, open storage, community, Java, open source & the law, e-discovery, HPC, Solaris cluster, high availability, virtualization, performance

Videoblogging for Sun: Numbers Update

  • 25 months: how long I’ve been shooting video for Sun
  • well over 200 hours: video in the can (mostly shot by me personally) – and more constantly on the way (the photo above doesn’t show quite all the tapes I’ve got – some were out for editing)
  • 150 hours: video edited, compressed, and published online  (not quite all by me)
  • 100s of “productions” ranging from 2-minute community introductions to a 3 hour last word on ZFS.
  • these videos were shot at about 25 different conferences (some Sun internal), plus on a few other occasions and visits to Sun offices worldwide
  • ~55,000 total views: of these videos as of Sept 18, 2009
  • speeches/presentations/workshops on how to do videoblogging and social media production

Geek Humor

At Sun we have lots of whiteboard walls where people can (well, could, theoretically) scribble down brilliant ideas while they’re discussing deep technological issues over coffee. What they mostly get used for is trenchant corporate humor, as above (note that the “Clothing Optional Teaming Area” has been so named for a very long time).

Recently, Lynn copied the Nerd Venn Diagram onto our coffee area wall, just to see what would happen:

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Some responses were philosophical:

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Some inscrutable (to me, anyway):

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(I would have used a loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou.)

Some topical:

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And my personal favorite:

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^ the intersect of “times of true bliss” and “times with pants on”.