EMFBC
Or how to jump the gun by 6 months, and not check for permission first
Eh What?
Well, A few of us at London Hackspace have been thinking about how we could make the video side of things better. Much better. We theorize (with past examples in Student TV and Real world TV, that we can reasonably expect to provide:
- HD Live streams for two stages
- Overflow capacity (i.e. "Ahh, stage A is full, can we get the pictures & sound to stage B?")
- All talks, Q&A sessions available on demand within 2 hours of their finish.
- Overnight continuity (i.e. at the end of the day, play out content from previous EMF's, and with permission, content from popular hacky content creators)
- A Cheesy closedown clock, a la BBC style 1am goodnight, hacking forecast, and national anthem.
- Live graphics on the live streams (i.e. Jonty - Beeeeeeees", and perhaps the odd bit of moderated twitter integration).
Isn't this a bit early to start planning?
No. Finding a good workflow takes time.
No. Although the cost of making HDTV has dropped massively, we still need to make our own bits (like controllers, not the mixers!!!) to keep costs down: Oddly, the controllers are the most expensive bit on hardware!
No. We need a while to source everything, and test kit together. Not to mention we'll be running a full test of the Master control room system beforehand.
No. Much of this planning cannot be done in a multi-threaded fashion.
No. EMF may not have even picked a site yet, but much of the infrastructure for EMFBC will remain the same. Pretty much the only thing that'll change is cable / fibre lengths, and that doesn't affect us until later in the process.
Can I bikeshed this?
- Not quite yet. Bikeshedding will be available later on, for things like controller design, software for automation, gfx control...
- Chat with us, we'll usually be talking about making TV.
- This idea is proposterous, we'll never do it. It is a waste of time. You cannot go to the moon. STOP NOW I AM IN CHARGE HERE : It's simpler than it sounds. Trust me. And No.