Back from VRA25

So I am back from the VRA conference in Kansas City, MO. I have to say that this was the absolute worst travel experience I’ve ever had. Not because of the conference itself, or the hotel, or anything like that- mostly just because I was sick the entire time and having a head cold while traveling by airplane is pretty much a guarantee that you are going to have some extra issues. In this case- my hearing was so messed up that I could barely carry a conversation with anyone while I was there.

On the technical side there were also some issues. Our hotel had the most ridiculously restrictive internet access I’ve ever experienced. They had real crummy wireless (two of my fellow presenters could not get their machines to work on wireless), had denied access to many useful sites including http://mozilla.org/ (WHY???), and most importantly were blocking port 1935! So I’m doing a live video tools demo and the port used by Flash Media Server to stream content is blocked- not good. Thankfully, through some dialogue with the technical coordinators and the hotel, we were able to get 1935 opened up for our presentation. Oh- and the machines they had available for us to use were installed with FLASH PLAYER 5!

The presentation itself went well. I was on a panel talking about different video delivery methods with three other universities. I had about as good of a time as possible considering my condition and we received a lot of positive feedback.

Presenting at the VRA Conference

I’ll be presenting my work with Flash Media Server and the DUVAGAII project as part of a panel on March 29th at the Visual Resources Association’s 25th Anniversary conference. It should be a fairly interesting panel and I will be demonstrating some of the video tools I’ve authored allowing instructors to produce short clips of longer film materials online, at their leisure, for presentation in the classroom and on the web. For anyone interested in using the Flash Platform, Coldfusion, and Flash Media Server for dynamic video delivery, this should be a panel worth attending!

A Burgeoning Beyond Restraint: Delivering Video, Audio, and Image Data to the Classroom

With advances in presentation platforms, file storage systems, and the increasing functionality and power of computer hardware, software, and network infrastructures, there is very little to hold back an educational institution from implementing a full-featured, bleeding-edge multimedia delivery system. During this session, we will demonstrate different systems built to take advantage of these advances in digital technology, and begin a discussion to further advance the development and implementation of such systems, while remaining mindful of very real restrictions placed upon us by fair use and intellectual property considerations.

During this session we will address three important areas software and hardware requirements for storage and delivery, the development and usage of advanced media delivery tools, and a discussion of questions surrounding copyright and security policies.

System demonstrations will include the DU-VAGA media presentation application, the ALORA digital object repository application, and the Media Mill storage, processing and delivery service.