General Assembly 2008
June 25, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Once again I’m at the UUA General Assembly working on the UUA GA web reporting team doing streaming and tape videography, computer geek support, and support for the new web-based system we are using for the writing/editing/publishing workflow. Fort Lauderdale at midsummer is just way too hot for reason. Too. Damn. Hot. Have I made myself understood on this point? I definitely plan on minimizing the number of trips I make between the GA webworkers office and the convention center even though the office in the hotel catty-corner across the street from the convention center. I’m not sure which is worse: the heat outside or the blast of air-conditioned air when you enter center or the hotel. I’ll be very surprised if I don’t get some of cold or sore throat from repeated temperature changes. Anyway, enough about the heat.
I’m impressed with the convention center so far. It seems to be laid out nicely so I won’t have to lug a video camera and tripod hither-and-yon to reach my various assignments. Last year’s center was a sprawling complex and I routinely had 10 or 15 minute walks just to get from room to room for my assignments. This year everything seems to be close by. I’m glad.
As I write this, I’m sitting at our table behind the production crew monitoring the streaming video for the opening ceremony and worship. The opening always makes me proud to be a UU and be part of the effort to bring General Assembly to UUs who can’t be here with us. Currently, our steaming service has 135 connections, which easily blows out our max connections from last year.
I hope to write more about GA this year as it happens.
Peace
–[Lance]
Categories: General Assembly
It sounds like some people are having trouble streaming on non-Windows computers — any way to offer some instructions or stream in an open-source format? See this blog post for one reported instance. Thanks!
Hi Jess,
Thanks for the comment. I checked out that lj post and left a comment. I’ll see about getting directions together for accessing our streams on various platforms.
–[Lance]
I thought I had problems, too (being on a Mac) but eventually realized that in one case there simply wasn’t a current live stream (I’m on Mountain time). Duh.
As for heat and cold: Having immigrated from Germany I has always driven me and my compatriots nuts that one has to travel with a long sleeve sweater at all times or freeze one’s butt off in any mall, restaurant, or public building. The waste of energy is gigantic.
Hi Martin,
Oddly enough, I’m not having as much of a problem with the heat here as I was expecting. Yeah, it’s hot, but I’m tolerating being outside better than I thought I would. The transition from outside to inside is a shock every time, though.
–[Lance]