About the Audio and/or Video Recording of Presentations
Legality and Obtaining Permission
The conference organizers are, in general, in favor of recording the sessions but we need each presenter to either sign a release or verbally agree on tape at the start of his session. Personally I think a paper release is better as it spells out the usage, and that such a paper should be included in the paperwork given to the presenters at the registration desk.
However, someone needs to coordinate with whomever has the list of presenters and check off names as forms are received, and nag those who haven't returned one yet. And indeed someone needs to be formal holder of those pieces of paper.
Technically speaking, I hope and believe that we can record *all* of the sessions and only remove those for whom we lack permission during the post-processing phase. It just makes life easier than trying to turn on/off recording equipment at the right time.
Approaches Taken
Some want to record just the audio and some want to record video as well. Some want to record by hooking into the room audio system "the board" and some detached. Now there's nothing wrong with some redundancy but obviously we can't have multiple people hooking into the audio system and trying to coordinate with the GWU staff.
My Approach (Jeff Rush)
I know nothing about the issues of video recording and am just planning on recording audio. I also am unsure of the capabilities of the room audio system, and besides I thought it a good idea to try to capture audio from the audience when the questions start flying. Perhaps foolish and noisy.
I also didn't want to babysit a pointable microphone or start/stop recording for each presentation. I'd rather be off enjoying the conference. So my approach is to drop a "black box recorder" in the presentation rooms, leave them running all day and pick them up each night for storage and perhaps offloading if sufficient space/bandwidth can be found. I would place each box off to one side of the podium, with a stereo pair of omnidirectional mics clipped to the wall/curtain in some manner. From such a position I hope to capture both the speaker and audience.
Each box is a Kuro Box (www.kurobox.com)