[PLUG-AV] Feedback from committee discussion

[Harry McNally]

Hello List

We revisited our AV state while discussing talk for 2025 and Nick rightly 
suggested opening discussion here rather than a committee working document.

So from the meeting here are some points I gleaned. Please break any out into 
a different Subject thread if you wish.

- James H has had ideas for a new workflow model for which he is preparing a 
short document. We can build our design on that 'spec'. James was happy to 
work away on that but if anyone wants to ask James for a brief list of tools 
and has experience, I would suggest contacting him directly to offer.

- We aren't sure (other than one complete set of hardware) what equipment is 
stored and may be serviceable. Nick may know where that is squirreled away but 
if anyone is holding any dusty boxes of AV gear, please speak up.

- There was discussion about a another grant. I'll start with my opinion that 
I think most effort is building and testing a new workflow. Might we do that 
on one set of good hardware and use that as a demonstrator for a grant ? Also, 
my sustainability hat guides me to ordering second-hand gear from RebootIT in 
Melbourne. Is it possible to obtain a grant for a larger set of lower cost 
systems for redundancy and spares ? Can we spend it on used gear ? As long as 
the workflow software has longevity, we can keep using equipment with 
purchased performance.

- There was discussion about limited numbers of live streamers but committee 
noted the recording was the main value; for PLUG as well as for the speaker as 
a CV addition. AV can address that as a priority.

- Jacek explained that many of the events/talks he attends now are recorded 
(or streamed?) with a mobile phone. My observation is that anyone can do that 
and the video may capture other aspects that can be edited into a recording. 
How might we invite that to happen and capture and sync it with any of the AV 
recorded content into a final edit ? Is it possible to stream those mobile 
sources to BBB or is the streaming tech all proprietary (I don't know). Can 
mobile video usefully be cropped to maintain the AV aspect ratio ?

- Any other pointer I missed, feel free to open a thread :-)

All the best
Harry