How Did You Like the Tech Talks?

Let us know your feedback on our tech talks that we recently held in Salt Lake and Provo. This is a great opportunity for us to learn what we could do better as well as to share with those who were not able to attend what you thought.

Tom

They were great! I thank you guys so much for setting those up. The only disappointment I had, was that I couldn't go to more of the sessions and learn more about the different projects that the church is working on. Brother Delhin's presentation was great in providing a quick yet in-depth overview of what the church's position on technology is. The Family History also answered my questions which I had about the new system and how we can intergrate into it.

Thanks again

I'd love to get my hands on notes or slides from the other sessions I wasn't able to attend. Like most (if not all) others, I wish I would have been able to hear them all. Tadd mentioned last night about perhaps getting some recordings posted online, and I know many people outside Utah would enjoy the content as well.

Overall, huge success. I haven't heard a single negative thing from anybody about it. Kudos to everybody for a job well done.

The tech talks were fantastic. It was also a great opportunity to network with other LDS technology professionals. I'm very excited to contribute to the community.

I've posted a report on my experience at the Tech Talk in Provo on my personal blog for any of you who didn't get a chance to go or attended different sessions than I did:

http://www.sixteensmallstones.org/lds-tech-talk-report

I was in town from Arizona to see my brother-in-law off on his mission and was glad that scheduling worked out that I could go. I enjoyed Joel's presentation especially the video from Pres. Hinckley about technology. There seems to be a lot of energy and effort going in to things right now and that is exciting to see. I am anxious to see some of the community initiatives roll-out.

I really enjoyed the Tech Talks as well. I attended both sessions so I have notes on 6 of the 8 talks for anybody interested:

http://blog.moregoodfoundation.org/2007 ... ech-talks/

The Tech Talks were excellent. More important, though, is the culture Joel has fostered. I suspect his forward thinking and openness allowed these events to take place.

I attended both the Salt Lake and Provo events so I could take in more sessions. I hope to see more events such as these. Congratulations to the excellent presenters.

I'd love to see/hear them, but I'm not a local. Are they available as a stream or video file somewhere?

epoulin wrote:I'd love to see/hear them, but I'm not a local. Are they available as a stream or video file somewhere?

Currently the plan is not to release any stream or video on the sessions for reasons I'm not at liberty to discuss. Should that change, however, I'll make a post. I encourage you to read the blogs of others on this forum about the event.

Tom

Are there any plans yet to have the Tech Talks anywhere besides Utah?

Or do we have any locals there that are willing to organize into blogging groups that span the various sessions so that we can get as much information about as many of the session as possible?

I'm not aware of any plans for Tech Talks outside of Utah but I'll try to find out. It is fairly inexpensive to host them in UT as you can imagine. Outside it becomes a much more costly proposal. In addition, when you take all of the leadership from the technology department out of commission for a couple of days (travel, etc) it can be disruptive. I'm not saying we won't do them, we may. I'm just pointing out some of the challenges.

Tom

I understand the reasons for keeping it local, I was just reaching for some hope there.

Hmm...I wonder if the wife wants to move to Utah...

richardkmiller wrote:I really enjoyed the Tech Talks as well. I attended both sessions so I have notes on 6 of the 8 talks for anybody interested:

http://blog.moregoodfoundation.org/2007 ... ech-talks/

Very good notes, Richard
I was hunting around for a report and yours fit the bill.

Yes, thanks for the notes! (the infrastructure notes make me feel warm inside)

A note on OpenOffice.org, I thought it was a great move, very cost effective. I work closely with that community (my day job is providing resources for such OSS projects), and there are some great features coming in the near future. One of the things that is going to be pushed will be an extensions framework (think Firefox in a way) that will stretch beyond application extensions and allow for content extensions as well. Such content can include galleries, templates, macro packs, etc. So, keep in mind that if for instance, the Church were to develop some good templates in OpenOffice.org Calc, and some church graphical content packs, they could be easily packaged and distributed as native OOo extensions. A little rough around the edges right now, but will be better in the months to come. The problem will then be bringing those tens of thousands of OOo installs up to speed with the latest version.

Cheers!

I live in Northern Virginia and I total agree that the expense of tranporting Tech Talks personal out here would be prohibitive. Video and/or audio feeds might also be costly. However, it should be fairly easy and inexpensive to post transcripts and Power Point presentations. Please don't forget those of us who live beyond the Intermountaiin West.

Joel Dehlin has requested that those interested in a potential Bay Area Tech Talk respond to his post on his blog.

Northern UK would be great but i guess unlikely!

Probabily not for a couple years. Of course if there could be a broadcasted tech talk that went to the stake centers, that might be a cool idea, though I don't know if there is enough interest world-wide for that to be useful.

thedqs wrote:Of course if there could be a broadcasted tech talk that went to the stake centers, that might be a cool idea, though I don't know if there is enough interest world-wide for that to be useful.

Unless I'm missing something, the satellite system is on 24/7. If there isn't a lot of interest, just put it on in the dead of night. We're techs. We can program VCRs.

RussellHltn wrote:We can program VCRs.

VCRs who uses those anymore, it's Tivo or DVD-RW now-a-days.

thedqs wrote:VCRs who uses those anymore, it's Tivo or DVD-RW now-a-days.

We're cheap. We're waiting for the FM group to upgrade the stake satellite system. I'd love to switch to a DVD with a built-in hard drive so I can do a quick edit and burn multiple copies of one broadcast.

But then what's the max running time for DVD? The last training broadcast had an advertised running time of 2.5 hours. I think some of the BYU conferences ran for 3 or 4 hours.

Depends which format you record it in, there are DVD recorder that do the same thing as tapes. 2 hrs, 4 hrs, 6 hrs. Depending on quality. If you get one that can use Dual Layer DVDs then you can get 5 hrs, 9 hrs and 12 hrs repectively. Of course if you want it to play in almost any DVD player then you need single layer and that goes for 2.5 hrs or so. If your stake upgrades all the buildings to players that can read Dual Layer then you have 5 hours.

Of course your stake could wait until HVD comes out to the masses and then you never have to worry about the length of the broadcast. Here is an article about HVDs as a future technology that is begin developed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc

At Joel's suggestion, I opened up a discussion thread on the possibility of arranging carpools for the bay area tech talks from Sacramento. Maybe crash at a restaurant afterwards and discuss the topics or share/compare notes. Maybe network...

Here's the site: http://www.chron.com/apps/comics/showCo ... se_to_Home

Oops, wrong one...

[thread=276]Sacramentans assembling for Bay Area Tech Talks[/thread]

There we go....

Come on over, if you're one of the chosen ones that live in Sacramento!



As for the recording lengths... There are some pretty nice DVD players out there now that play AVI format files... You can cram nearly two hours on a CDROM, and probably close to 7-8 on a DVD.

Justin