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Now over 300 recorded presentations on the UGTV site

Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.
The UGTV site now has over 300 recordings. What a milestone. :-) John Mason just informed me, after he posted a recording to the site, that he noticed his was the 300th recording on the site. We quipped that since we're both user group managers there's really not much I can offer him as a prize that he doesn't already have. :-)

Totals so far, after 20 months

But yes, as of today there are 301 presentations from 180 presenters, totaling 290+ hours of video. The site will be 2 years old in October (I started stocking the list in late September before opening the doors to the first other contributors, and the first of which was Nick Kwiatkowski on 10/2/06.)

Anyway, so at about 20 months since then that's a rate of about 15 per month or one every other day. Not bad, and of course thanks to all who have contributed links (as well as to the speakers who let their sessions be recorded) so we could link to and view them.

Always room for more...anyone can contribute, easily

As I try to point out often, anyone can contribute a recording. No signup or registration is required. You can submit one in about 20 seconds. (And you'll note there's never been a spam entry. I've got that covered, beyond just a captcha.)

If you've not checked it out, come on down

Anyway, to learn more about the site (and its many features if you just want to find and view recordings), either visit the site or check out the other entries I've done on it, linked to below.

Here's to the next 300!

CFMeetup update, and some other new online training resources to enjoy in the meantime

Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.
Some readers may be wondering "when are the next CF meetups?", it's just that between the recent conferences and normal summer doldrums it's been a little hard to find speakers.

The good news is that I do have a couple speakers already lined up the next 2 weeks (10th and 17th). I'll announce those soon, as well as any I might still arrange for this week (the 3rd).

In the meantime, I'll note that you can get some online training goodness via the many recorded CFUnited presentations that have been posted free for all to enjoy by the good folks who run the conference. You'll find 33 of them listed at my UGTV site.

Finally, I wanted to pass along news of a free resource from Adobe to help people learn more about Rich Internet Applications. It includes recorded online workshops, projects to work on, and book recommendations, all for free. Check it out at:

Rich Internet Application Teaching Resources

Anyone know where I can find a recorded presentation about ...?

Note: This blog post is from 2008. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.
I saw a question on a CF list today, where someone was asking whether anyone knew of a recorded presentation about a particular topic. That made me think it might be time to remind the community of my UGTV site:

http://www.carehart.org/ugtv/

There you can find over 200 recorded presentations from nearly 150 presenters, totaling 220+ hours of video, all for free, and searchable, with RSS feeds, including RSS feeds based on your search criteria.

New recordings are being added all the time. Indeed, I've been thinking also of starting to publish a weekly summary of submissions here on my blog, for those who don't think to get the RSS feed.

Recording your next user group meeting (and finding the recording)

Note: This blog post is from 2007. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.
If you're a user group manager who is taking advantage of the free Acrobat Connect account from Adobe for user groups, the next challenge for you may be how to make and use recordings of your meetings. I find that many managers have just never done this, and it can be so valuable, especially since you can then list the recording for your members and indeed for the entire community on my UGTV site. More on this later.

Making a recording of your meeting

Fortunately, it's very easy to record your meeting. It doesn't matter if you'll be having any remote attendees. Indeed, it doesn't matter if you'll be having a remote speaker. As long as you have an internet connection, you can record whatever a speaker says and shows. Everything you see and hear will be captured and can be played back in perfect fidelity.

While you're in a Connect meeting (as a host, discussed in the earlier blog entry), simply hit the Meeting>Record Meeting option in the top menu bar. You'll be prompted for a name and description. Don't worry too much about getting this perfect at that point, since I'll show how you can easily edit the information later. (You don't even need a description, and since the recording will be timestamped, you don't even need to worry about creating a unique name, if you'll be editing it soon after the meeting--so you don't forget which recording is which.)

Tip: As a word of advice, I'd recommend you be prepared to start your meeting right after you hit the record button. The recording will indeed start immediately, and I've heard too many recordings where the host and/or presenter are fumbling around getting things situated while the "tape" is rolling. Please be considerate of those who will listen to your recording later.

They don't want to have to wait--and there's no easy means to know how long such preliminaries will go on. Advancing the playhead in the playback mechanism isn't as precise as it could be, either, so the listener won't be able to easily skip ahead. This is an easy mistake in the moment. You figure everyone else in the room is waiting patiently while you get started. But it's quite annoyance at the start of a recording.

An update: Yes, as I'll discuss later, you can now with later versions of Connect go back and edit the recording, but you probably won't bother, so just keep this in mind.

When you're done, you simply hit the Meeting>Record Meeting menu option again, or the red "recording" icon/dot in the top right of the Connect interface (which tells you you're recording).

Note that there is no "pause" feature. If you stop it, you're stopping that recording and would need to start a new one. If you're having multiple talks during a meeting, it may be best anyway to create a separate recording for each.

Here's another tip: you can use the ease of creating recordings to create a quick one before the start of the meeting to test how you and your presenter sound. Sometimes, you can't judge by what you hear, if you've got bad bandwidth temporarily. You can create a quick recording, go listen to it, then delete it. I'll show how to find the recordings next.

Finding the Recording URL

OK, so you've made your recording. Now, how do you find it? I hear this lament from user group managers all the time. In fact, it was 2 such pleas for help that I saw today which sparked me to create this entry (been meaning to for some time).

You get to the recordings not through the Connect interface but instead through the same interface you use to create the meeting. (Each Connect account may have a different URL, and of course you need a valid login/password, so I can't tell you how to get in. If someone else setup the meeting, you need to contact them, or your Connect administrator, to get that info.)

On the Admin page, click the "Meetings" link on the top of the page. That will show all your current meetings. (You can also use "my scheduled meetings", but it's a slightly different presentation of meetings list.) Select your desired meeting (the one where you made the recording--as you may see several listed).

You will then see several links, one of which will be "Recordings". That's where the recordings (if any) for that meeting will be listed. Click that.

Now you can click on a recording (that name you gave when you started the recording). That will show you the URL for the recording ("URL for viewing"). You can click the link right there to have it open and start playing the recording. You'll want to make sure it sounds and looks good. If not, just take notes to do things better next time. You can't edit the recordings in any way. An Update: note that you can now edit your recordings, such as to remove deadspace at the beginning or in the middle, or if a speaker loses connectivity for a time, etc. You do such edits from a button on the same manager pages being discussed here.

Tip: Here's another reason to view the recording while you're at this point. If the recording prompts for a username/password, you can alter it to not require that. Indeed, you can also make a slight modification to be able to track how many times the recording is viewed. I cover both in another blog entry, "Webcast: How to track views of your Breeze/Acrobat Connect recorded presentations".

Finally, while you're viewing the recording information (whether before or after you move it as discussed in the above-named entry), you will also see an option called "Edit", where you can rename it or add/edit the description. You can change this any time, even after people have started viewing the recording. The URL of the recording won't (and can't) be changed if you edit this information.

Tell the world about your recording

Now that you have the recording URL, you'll certainly want to blog it, and tell the presenter also, as s/he may also blog about it. (Again, be sure to have tested it first to make sure users aren't prompted for a username/password.)

Finally, don't forget to post it on the repository of recorded user group presentations, UGTV. Yep, that's a section of my site, but it's for anyone to post recordings to. Indeed, if you find a recording and don't see it listed, you can add it, whether you're the author or not. (If a recording is listed publicly, I can see no reason the author wouldn't want it listed in the UGTV list.) For more on the UGTV, see the UGTV category at right.

Hope that helps. Let me know if I forgot anything, or if it helps you. Feedback is always welcome.

Like the UGTV site? Vote for it at CFDJ Awards

Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.
My UGTV site has been nominated for "Best Web Site or Community" in CFDJ Reader's Choice Awards. If you've not yet voted, your vote would be appreciated. There are 8 other categories, and voting should take less than a minute.

The UGTV site is a directory of recorded UG presentations, now with 86 recordings from 65 presenters.

[....Continue Reading....]

Are you recording CFUG meetings? Check out this tip to track how many visits you get

Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.
If you're a CFUG manager who may be taking advantage of the really nice offer from Adobe for us to use Connect to broadcast and/or record user group meetings, here's a nice tip for being able to track how many people have viewed the recording.

[....Continue Reading....]

UGTV: now with RSS feeds based on search criteria

Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.
For those who are enjoying the UGTV service I've created, I want to point out that I have updated it yet again, adding a new RSS feed mechanism based on search criteria you may enter.

Simply perform a search, and a link for the feed based on that criteria will appear with the normal feed below the table of results.

Or, you can just modify the RSS feed yourself, adding:

http://www.carehart.org/ugtv/rss.cfm?search=your+keywords

(I'll point out that I also let you control how many are found, via an optional "entries" attribute, which defaults to 10.)

Enjoy.

Update on UGTV: more presentations, more submitters, and more features

Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.
Just an update for those who are interested in my UGTV repository of recorded user group presentations.

First, it now boast nearly 30 presentations from 24 presenters, submitted by myself and 5 others. Thanks, everyone!

I've also added an RSS feed, so you can be notified of new postings. The URL is offered at the bottom of the list page.

Finally, I have also tweaked the interface further in a few ways.

First, thanks to Jeff Coughlin for sharing a few hints to help me fix my show/hide of the recording descriptions. I had it only showing, but not hiding, due to a bug that I hadn't gotten around to fixing. He offered me the appropriate Javascript, making it too easy not to update it. Thanks, Jeff!

Also, he wasn't thrilled by my next/previous links (I was using the greaterthan and lessthan brackets for prev/next, doubling them for first/last.) He pointed out his available custom tag, and again he made it too easy not to try, with a nifty "quickstart" in his docs. Again, kudos.

UGTV: Now offering dozens of video presentations from your favorite presenters

Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.
When I announced yesterday the repository of recorded video presentations I labelled UGTV, I may not have made it clear enough that these are recordings from dozens of your favorite presenters. It's not just my own presentations. Indeed, right now I don't have any posted myself. :-) There are now dozens of presentations, so come take a look.

I've also since updated the look and feel, to add searching and paging, in addition to the sorting it already offered.

I also want to reiterate that I welcome (and encourage) folks to add more links to other recorded video presentations. Indeed, I hope that CFUG managers will keep this in mind as the place to post notices when they record a new presentation. The form is very simple, asking only for the title and URL for a new presentation to post.

Visit the repository at UGTV.

UGTV is on the air. Watch CF presentations from your home/office or CFUG.

Note: This blog post is from 2006. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.
If you've missed past CF presentations at CFUGs and online meetings, did you know they may have been recorded? Well here's good news: I've now created a repository to hold links to all such recorded presentations, across any and all CFUGs (and I'm open to talks beyond CF). Come see them (and add any new ones) at a site I've named "UGTV". :-) It's available simply as http://carehart.org/ugtv/.

If you missed my note Friday on "Is your CFUG taking advantage of the free access to Breeze for Adobe user groups", I talked about how Adobe UG managers can use a free Beeze (a.k.a Adobe Connect) account for bringing in remote presenters, allowing remote attendees, and creating such recordings.

The UGTV site also points out existing lists of recorded presentations that focus on specific "venues". I hope that this site can be a repository of any and all venues--even personally recorded ones as some may start to create. Think of is as UGTube! (I actually found that the domain name is available, but decided not to use it for fear of tradename infringement.)

The site is a work-in-progress. For now, it's functional, allowing you to both list, sort, and add presentations (yes, anyone can add presentations. Please do!)

I'll evolve the site further, for sure to improve its interface and functionality.

For now, please spread the word both for those who want to watch (from home/office or in a group at a CFUG) and those who might be able to add new presentation.

And let me know what you think, below. I welcome your comments (though again, if commenting on the interface, note the comments on the page where I list plans I already have).

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