GOAT Webinar Series Trailer

In an effort to get the GOAT Webinar series off the ground, I’m going to attempt a micro webinar (10-15min) to summarize GOAT, it’s history and initiatives to-date, and what to expect from the rest of the series—sort of a “setting the tone session” for the webinars.

Really, it’s just a way to work out the kinks in the streaming process, before we get to the real presenters, but it could also becomes something of a trailer for upcoming webinars in the series, and/or a short synopsis of the conference and GOAT as a whole, like a video format version of the GOAT Report. In fact, I expect to rely heavily on what @sudokita did for that report, with all due credit and citations to come, but I’m wondering if anyone else has something they’d like to see, or concerns about how this should be done.

Also, what do people expect to get out of the webinar series? I’m especially eager to hear from the presenters on that last point, but please, all y’all bring your feedback, and let me know if you’d like to be involved in some other way.

Stay cool, everyone!

cc: @dbuckmas @Patrick @sudokita @gbathree @mstenta @ircwaves @dornawcox @chrowe (please cc anyone I’ve missed in the comments… don’t believe this includes all the people who signed up to be presenters, but these were all I could find via the forum autocomplete)

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Thanks for getting the process started. I think a test run and setting the tone session is a great idea to frame the series. I am very much looking forward to the updates from the folks who signed up to present!

@jgaehring I love this idea! Where will the streams be posted?

@todrobbins, excellent question!

Through our trials, the conferencing/streaming platform I feel most comfortable with is Hangouts On The Air, which easily uploads (and livestreams) to YouTube. It should also make it super simple to embed a livesteam view as well as the archived video on goatech.org, either in a blog post or a section of its own. Of course, I do expect some presenters will need a platform with more robust features than Hangouts on the Air, ie, more webinar-y stuff like whiteboards etc, which we certainly need to accommodate. Unfortunately the software we’ve experimented with that supports that functionality (WebEx and BigBlueButton, primarily) all have some major issues, particularly running on Linux as I am, and as I imagine other presenters will be. Zoom seems like it would be nice, but I don’t have an account there. There is also a premium version of Hangouts called Meet, which has more video-conferencing features, and I think GOAT could get a non-profit account for free, but I probably wouldn’t be the right one to set that up. So if you know of other good solutions, please let me know. Otherwise, I’m probably just going to kick off this first one with with Hangouts/YouTube for simplicity’s sake.

Also, I’m curious to know what people’s thoughts are in general about posting webinars after the fact. I think YouTube can’t really be surpassed in terms of reach, but I know there are some other good alternatives available, either to replace or supplement YouTube. HookTube is a neat privacy-minded tool, at least for linking/embedding YouTube content. I’m also assuming we want this content free and available for all to view, but if presenters have concerns there we can certainly address those.

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A great template suggested by @dornawcox: http://openagriculture.weebly.com/

Also, @Patrick has volunteered to setup a registration process for presenters.

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Thanks Jamie!

For me, this series is about two things:

  1. it’s a low effort way for the community to keep up with itself and new stuff going on
  2. it’s a entrance point for people who are on the edges to get excited about GOAT and open ag tech.

I would looooooooooooooove if this were also podcast accessible, or on normal podcasting apps. Maybe that’s another thing, but if you want people to really listen to a detailed conversation and think about it, podcasts are way better than video. If you want to show somebody how your platform/tool/hardware widget works, then youtube is a no brainer.

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@jgaehring Sounds awesome. I’d be excited to see some sort of webinar/talk-series thing going. Btw, there are lots more photos (outside of the ones I put in the GOATreport) that are available in our shared google drive if you’d like more for your visual GOATreport :slight_smile:

There was a list of proposed talks that I remember @dbuckmas putting together at GOAT 2018. Is that the intended starting point? Or is the signup sheet via @Patrick superseding that list?

+1 @gbathree’s comment about having these podcast accessible. I imagine 3 talk types:

  1. demos or tutorials (software, building things, in-field deployment etc.)
  2. presentation/lecture-style talks (with or without visual aids, def. without the stigma haha)
  3. panels, interviews, or debates (?!)

Is there a way to have all three available as both videos and audio-only? I imagine the hardest audio-only would be for talk type #1.

While we could embed content on the goat website, it would be good to cross publish in more broadly accessible platforms including youtube and itunes podcast directory. We would ideally prioritize what is more useful to us and eventually pick something could scale with us. In the meantime, @jgaehring, starting with Hangouts/Youtube makes sense!

I would like add one more desired objectives for this series:
3. Expanding our collective knowledge base. Ideally it serves as a repo for learning materials as well as contains interesting talks on things that folks are working on.

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+1 for audio only option. Not everything maybe (some stuff requires a show and tell), but maybe let’s define beforehand if something is audio-only read, and make sure it’s interviewed that way so we can put it up.

Is anyone familiar with making a podcast… is anyone from Nori here, I know they have a podcast. @alexsandra could you help on this?

Patrick will be using that list Dennis created as a starting point, yes.

I’d like to make that format available for as many presentations as possible. Also want to leave a lot of latitude with the presenters, especially while we’re discovering what is most effective. I’m thinking primarily in terms of what platform we use for the live event, but that could mean we have some workshops that aren’t so audio-only-friendly. But I really like those 3 categories, could be helpful to request presenters stay within one of those tracks so we know what to expect, how best to accommodate their needs, and how best to broadcast their presentation.

Will definitely include that. Thanks!

+1 for any contributions from folks who know more about the production of this sort of thing, audio/visual/and all things in between. Patrick has a little more experience with some streaming software, but I’m flying by the seat of my pants.

My list of ideas/presenters/etc. is here:

Any thoughts for the 2019 event location and timing? Could it maybe be at Noble? We might be interested in hosting at Purdue in 2020.

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I think Noble is high on the list for list for sure. I think @sudokita and other organizers I am open to begin meeting for 2019 following GOSH which ends Oct 15… that would give us a few months to get things organized. Perhaps we should set an organizers meetidng date and invite anyone interested in participating this year to join… What do you all say?

Sounds great! I’m down to start meeting then. We should switch meeting dates/organizer stuff to the other thread as folks had shown interest in joining the organizing team there :slight_smile:

Jamie will do the first one on October 8th.

I’m going to get the scheduling & registration together.

I just moved and started a new job so it’s been crazy busy for me lately but it’s simmering down now.

From the current speaker list we have most of them will be #2 style but I would like tutorial and interview formats too.

For the presentation style talks I like eorganics format where you have one or multiple speakers and a moderator who takes stack and reads questions at the end of the presentation.

I would like to have the video and audio with a pdf in the show notes if there are slides.

I’m looking at some software that linux podcasters use to automate publishing. I’m would like to post them on itunes, youtube, archive.org, soundcloud, & RSS.

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Hey all, I just found this thread - not sure how I missed it before. Has the webinar series started? What is its current status?

Ugh, dropped the ball on this again. I need to try reorganizing and seeing if folks are still interested in presenting.

You might want to reach out the the people who attended Biddy GOAT. It would be great to have a podcast that introduces the projects in the hackathon. I wasn’t there but based on pictures in the GOAT room on riot.im I can tell you these people were: @gbathree, @sudokita, @mstenta, @donblair, @david.n.forster

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Dennis and I met for a call recently to focus and I think we have a rough plan. In short I will record the series on zoom and thought we should try for every three weeks starting on Jan 17th 1pm East Coast time. We thought that we should have two hosts at a minimum with others (All of you!) as alternatives to allow for the series to continue if Dennis or I are not able to join.

Rough format would be a brief GOAT welcome followed by brief introductions and a structured guest presentation (about 30min) followed by Q&A that includes some standard interview questions and can include facilitated participation from other viewers.

Some remaining questions to resolve before we start are:

  1. three common GOAT related priming questions
  2. what platform to publish the recordings (youtube/vimeo/other?)
  3. Series web page on GOATech to promote past and upcoming presentations.
  4. Calendar invites and confirm presenters and hosts for first several in the series.
  5. Other?

Sound good? Feedback?

Ready for Jan 17th!?

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We can use the goatech website to publish, it’s possible to publish through wordpress (there are plugins). There are some services which you publish to, which cost some money (monthly) but not much - those allow you to get posted to the major services like itunes and google play and stuff…

GOAT priming questions… maybe…

why open, and how has it helped or hindered?
how are you sustainable and how does open play into that (or not :slight_smile: ) (business model for business, publishing / impact model in academia, fundraising model in non-profits…)
What does your ideal future look like in ag?

The priming questions sound like a good start to me. I will copy them into our draft script.

I think for our introduction we can basically read our statement of purpose and introduce the series as our way of keeping up to speed with the rapid changes in tech and across our projects between and in preparation for our in person gatherings. Excited to see our first sessions get underway!