re: [Interview] Part 11: Teresa Hennig, International MS Access Authority

jointer99 — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 03:10:58 GMT

Teresa, I believe that in large measure you and I have similar experiences and philosophies about the aims of UG's. Fundamentally UG's are about "sharing"; sharing knowledge, sharing experience, sharing contacts. With that in mind I have been investigating ways to broaden the knowledge/experience sharing. I quite often receive emails from people who are having difficulty in getting to meetings or live too far away (sometimes several hundred miles) to be directly involved with VANTUG. It is very easy to forget the benefits that you have when you live near a large metropolitan area compared with people who live in smaller communities and don't get the opportunity for regular, high quality input. I think that it is time that we try to use current technology to take the meeting to people that can't get to the meeting.

When I suggest this people tend to think in terms of webcasting a meeting. That would be nice but access to a high speed internet connection and the associated cost would be largely impractical, at least in our case. That is before you even consider the A/V side of things. An alternative that I have been investigating is the idea of recording meetings so that they can be viewed as streaming video as and when desired. To do this effectively requires a fair up front investment in A/V equipment and the ability to post process (edit and compress) a large video file (probably 30GB) for practical streaming purposes (3GB), plus a web location to stream from. To get a decent quality video recording without special lighting you have go to a professional quality video camera (such as often used by news teams).

The aim here is not just to satisfy VANTUG members but to make this freely available to all. Why should the fact that VANTUG members get the opportunity to have a valuable presentation by someone locally be confined by geography? In the past technology and prohibitive cost were the limiting factors. I don't believe that such a move would inhibit attendance at meetings since there are other clear benefits from being there, like networking and getting your own questions answered. However, it would still help those who cannot be there. Right now we post presenters' PowerPoint slide decks but that is very limiting in communicating the meeting.

At this point I really don't know if VANTUG can afford or justify the expense of purchasing the A/V equipment. I am hopeful that I can find sponsors for the post processing and hosting the video streaming. Educational establishments are a good target for post processing and streaming because they often already record lectures for the students.

INETA via their webcast series is doing its part to leverage speaker opportunities and I would like to see UG's eventually try and leverage their speaker opportunities. Every time someone with something of value to say speaks we need to capture it for everyone's benefit. A side benefit is that it would be a great way to give UG member speakers real feedback on how they performed so that they can get better.

As much as I would like to see this happen in the near future it will probably take some time to put in place. Deciding where limited funds should go for the overall benefit of UG members is always a challenge.

Cheers

Graham J.