2011 CAP Annual Conference and Winter National Board---NEWS

[NCRblues]

uh...my feed just clicked in for a few seconds, and they were on item 6....WAA..... how did they get there?

Can anyone with a working feed let us know please?

[MSG Mac]

They seem to be giving Unit Citations for selling Wreaths

[NCRblues]

Now it says..... " The live stream of the 2011 Winter National Board has concluded. 
Thank you for joining us!"

What a joke.... I'm sorry, but its only 4:20pm on the east coast, they could not get anything else done at all today??

And they need to get the stream working properly, i think i seen maybe 30 seconds of it that was not interupted by loading or a complete stop of the stream...

P.S. are they going to *try* and stream tomorrow or not?

[Eclipse]

They seem to be giving Unit Citations for selling Wreaths

Seriously?

[RiverAux]

Did they do any agenda items? 

[NCRblues]

Did they do any agenda items?

I'm not 100% sure, but i think they only did item #6... but i could not see 90% of it, so....

[Smithsonia]

I enjoyed the feed after a while. I treated it like a non sequential bit of Dadaism. People were talking - then there was buffering - and poof - the previous speaker disappeared and a new one materialized. Then there was a question period. Suddenly - POOF - came another officer seemingly to answer the posed question with their name. As in; "when will this new qualification be announced?" - poof - ""Col. Bob Smith - I'm here to present..." If you just let it roll over you - It's a little like the Woody Allen movie - What's Up Tiger Lilly. The lips weren't synced, the answers were scrambled, point of view erratic, the plot interrupted, and fun ensued.

[bosshawk]

Sort of reminds me of an old Army saying:  "Nothing is too good for the troops"  And that is what the troops got:  nothing.

[NCRblues]

I enjoyed the feed after a while. I treated it like a non sequential bit of Dadaism. People were talking - then there was buffering - and poof - the previous speaker disappeared and a new one materialized. Then there was a question period. Suddenly - POOF - came another officer seemingly to answer the posed question with their name. As in; "when will this new qualification be announced?" - poof - ""Col. Bob Smith - I'm here to present..." If you just let it roll over you - It's a little like the Woody Allen movie - What's Up Tiger Lilly. The lips weren't synced, the answers were scrambled, point of view erratic, the plot interrupted, and fun ensued.

You know, i was really looking forword to watching this. I woke up earlyer than normal, clicked on the link, and got progressively more angry ever time it started buffering.

Maybe someone who is a captalker and who is attending *cough* Ned *cough* could let someone know that the feed was a fail of epic proportions....

[a2capt]

Glad to see it wasn't just me. I gave up on it.  But having been on both ends of this kind of setup I concur. The upstream/provided connection is usually to blame.  These hotels spend the least amount of money for anything and charge the maximum premium.

[Spaceman3750]

Maybe next time around 4G will be a bit more prevalent...

[Eclipse]

Maybe next time around 4G will be a bit more prevalent...

Mobile Broadband is not generally a viable option - I know, I use it all the time.

1) as you mention, it is not even remotely ubiquitous - I got 8+ Mbs last Fall in Denver, I was lucky to get .5 last month in Vegas.

b.. most convention centers wreck havoc on cellular signals in general  - high, metal ceilings, and many times in the outskirts of
urban areas make for "no bars".

3) Even 4G has a slow upstream - generally under a Mb, regardless of the downstream pipe, by design.

d. Using your own broadband or internet is more times than not a violation of the convention center or hotel's service agreement(s)
and a lot of them charge uber $$$ for a drop (like $1000+).  Its one thing to tether a phone or use it in your hotel room, and
another to replace their service with a "bring your own".

Not saying it is cricket, just saying it "is".

[PHall]

You need something like a dedicated T-1 circuit to be able to to stream something like this.
They were probably piggybacking on the T-1 that also serves the Hotel's Guest Business Center.
I'm sure if National wanted to drop some serious coin to Verizon they could have gotten their own private T-1 circuit for the weekend.
And there would have been complaints here on CAPTalk about National wasting our dues money...

[NCRblues]

You need something like a dedicated T-1 circuit to be able to to stream something like this.
They were probably piggybacking on the T-1 that also serves the Hotel's Guest Business Center.
I'm sure if National wanted to drop some serious coin to Verizon they could have gotten their own private T-1 circuit for the weekend.
And there would have been complaints here on CAPTalk about National wasting our dues money...

No there would not have been complaints about that... in fact i am more upset that we could not see the majority of the days material, and i was just informed they will not be streaming tomorrows events. I have already look at the capmemebers web site and they have removed the link to the streaming video...

Anyone got any idea why they would not be streaming the remainder of the NB meeting??

[cap235629]

You need something like a dedicated T-1 circuit to be able to to stream something like this.
They were probably piggybacking on the T-1 that also serves the Hotel's Guest Business Center.
I'm sure if National wanted to drop some serious coin to Verizon they could have gotten their own private T-1 circuit for the weekend.
And there would have been complaints here on CAPTalk about National wasting our dues money...

No there would not have been complaints about that... in fact i am more upset that we could not see the majority of the days material, and i was just informed they will not be streaming tomorrows events. I have already look at the capmemebers web site and they have removed the link to the streaming video...

Anyone got any idea why they would not be streaming the remainder of the NB meeting??

maybe because it wasn't working?

[Ned]

   Maybe someone who is a captalker and who is attending *cough* Ned *cough* could let someone know that the feed was a fail of epic proportions....

Well, I did, of course.  Early this morning after the first few "bad feed" comments were posted.  They checked and rechecked, and everything seemed good at this end.  They even called some of their colleagues at NHQ, who reported that feed looked OK (not perfect, but still very good) off the net in Montgomery.

I'm no net guru, so that's as far as I can take it.

But I'm sure you all remember that if it were up to me, I wouldn't stream the meetings at all - as long as it costs significant amounts of money for the employees, equipment and bandwidth at hotel prices.  I just don't think we get much value for the thousands of dollars it costs to stream it.  We don't have the "viewership numbers" here, but my WAG is that we are talking at most something like 200-300 viewers.  At a cost of $10-30 dollars per viewer.

Money we could have spent on cadet scholarships, NCSAs, o-flights, & training materials.

(Or, to be fair, race cars.    )

I won't be able to post my usual AAR, since I am spending only a few minutes at the meeting each hour.  I am primarily responsible for the NCAC which is meeting in a different room.

Thanks for watching.

[Eclipse]

I'd just as soon as see a nicely edited version posted on the web afterward, or just not bother.

It isn't like seeing the discussions will change anything.

[davidsinn]

I'd just as soon as see a nicely edited version posted on the web afterward, or just not bother.

It isn't like seeing the discussions will change anything.

Yes. One person records it and then edit in the slides after the fact and post to the website within a week. Cheap and works better than the mess we have now.

[RiverAux]

[We don't have the "viewership numbers" here, but my WAG is that we are talking at most something like 200-300 viewers. 

I seem to recall hearing statements made (while watching previous livestreams of course ) that "thousands" of people were watching the feed.  For some reason a figure of 15-16,000 comes to mind, though I am not at all sure of that. 

I'm not sure I'd recommend going down the road to looking at cost per watcher as the cost per actual participant in these events isn't cheap either.  I seem to recall our wing spending 1K+ to send the wing commander to one not that long ago.

[a2capt]

Well, the statistics may show that there are not that many that watch it .. perhaps because it's somewhat of a challenge to watch. So they.. don't.

"Statistics show that this roadway has a high ratio of flat tire occurrences along it". They don't tell you that the road is traveled heavily by construction demolition trucks that drop stuff. One way past the "hotel" issue is to run a reflector server somewhere else and that can even be a static setup that never changes.  Then from the remote/event site the stream only goes there and thats it. Perhaps this is what they are doing now, I've not snooped around past the URL at all.