Hello, and welcome to our
continuing series of live
webinars documenting creative
use of Mediasite
all over the world.
I'm Sean Brown, vice
president of
education for Sonic Foundry.
Today's webinar is entitled,
Lecture Capture Systems in the
Cloud: Why New York Law School
Outsourced Hosting For
Campus-Wide Lecture.
Once again, we have a tremendous
number of people
and a tremendous amount of
interest in this topic today.
And we have people joining us
from all over the world.
Over 400 people have registered
and are getting
online as I speak right now.
Again, people representing
higher education institutions
from almost every state in the
union, every province in
Canada, and from many different
countries around the
world, including Australia,
Sweden, Columbia, Guatemala,
India, Thailand, Iran, Iceland,
South Korea, England,
Iran, New Zealand,
Egypt, Ireland,
Spain, Norway, and France.
Those were just the people at
the time we went on the air,
so welcome to all of you to what
I am absolutely convinced
is going to be one of our most
interesting webcasts.
Before we get started and I
introduce my guest, I'd like
to point out the interactive
features of the Mediasite
player that you're watching
us in right now.
Below me in the lower right
you'll notice a speech bubble.
That's the ask button.
If you'd like to pose a question
at anytime during
this presentation, just click
on that speech bubble and
submit and I'll receive
that question here.
And we'll relay it to our
presenter at the end of his
prepared remarks.
I encourage you to provide your
email address along with
your question.
That way if we aren't able to
get to your question before
the end of our time, we can
follow up with you offline
which my presenter has
graciously agreed to assist us
in doing in case we do
run out of time.
In the lower left is an info
button where you can get
additional information about
today's webcast. You'll also
find links to supplementary
reference materials, including
the actual PowerPoint
presentation in PDF form that
my guest is going to be
speaking from today.
So now it's my pleasure to
introduce my guest and friend,
Mike DeMeo.
Michael is the director of
Academic Media Services at New
York Law School.
A graduate of New York
University at Albany with a BA
in Sound Design For Theater,
Michael has since worked and
lived in New York City.
His early focus featured
collaborations with many
modern dance companies, most
notably Torque Dance and later
the American Dance Guild.
Since he has concentrated his
professional efforts on
digital media working in the
Media and News Departments at
The FeedRoom.
Michael's continued work in
sound design for film has been
featured in the Tribeca
Film Festival.
All the way from New
York, we're really
happy to have you here.
Welcome.
Go ahead with your
prepared remarks.
Well, thank you very
much, Sean.
Thanks for having me.
It's a pleasure to be here in
sunny Madison, Wisconsin.
And welcome, as Sean said,
to all of you who are
participating in this
webinar today.
And I say participation, because
we will do a quick
presentation, but
I really want to
invite more of a dialogue.
More of questions from
you, the audience.
Because I can talk about our
experience at New York Law
School, but I want to be more
of a resource to you who are
attending this webinar
today because
you're looking for insights.
Insights that I may offer
or you may have specific
questions about the process
that you're going through.
I imagine you're attending this
because you may be about
to purchase Mediasite or launch
and deploy a system on
campus whether it be a
corporate or a higher
educational campus or
K-12, et cetera.
And I just want to be there in
that way that I can provide
that resource for you
both during today's
webinar as well as after.
And we'll talk about that.
How you can reach out
to me afterwards.
So that's where we are.
So as Sean said, I've come from
New York Law School and
we're going to talk about cloud
architecture for class capture.
Mediasite refers to lecture
capture as lecture capture.
At New York Law School, we refer
to it as class capture.
So if there's any sort of
translation that's a quick
consideration.
Introduction.
So again, as Sean said, I'm
Michael DeMeo, the Director of
Academic Media Services at
New York Law School.
And let me quickly get into
who New York Law School or
what New York Law School is.
New York Law School-- we
launched a new facility, as
you see here, in the fall
semester of 2009.
And I was part of the team that
was brought in to launch
that new facility and the
technologies around that new
facility, academic technology,
specifically.
A quick, condensed history
of New York Law School.
We are based in Tribeca,
Manhattan.
We are a private law school
and founded in 1891.
And most relevant to this
discussion is our current
dean, Dean Richard Matasar.
He came to the school in 2000
and he had a very defined goal
and mission statement that was
to one, embrace innovation,
foster integrity and
professionalism, and advance
justice for a diverse society.
Obviously, as a member of the
IT organization, I was there
to fulfill on mission statement
number one which is
embrace innovation.
And we hopefully have
done that so far and
will continue to.
And then also a key component
here in the timeline is the
breaking new ground initiative
which was the construction of
that new facility that I
described a minute ago which
we launched in the
fall of 2009.
And all of the components that
were brought in, including new
team members, et cetera.
So let's talk about
that new building.
It's kind of a key piece of
today's discussion because I
realize that one advantage that
we had at New York Law
School-- or two things-- were
the fearless leadership of our
CTO, John Southard, who also
embraced innovation.
And one of those ways that he
did that is he recognized that
that new building presented our
team the opportunity to
kind of do away with the old
and really look forward and
look to the types of
technologies from all the
different divisions of
IT including AV.
So how did we do that and
what does it consist of?
So in the new building, we have
13 main lecture spaces or
classrooms, four of which are
moot court and in the legal
education field, that is simply
a mock trial setting.
You'll hear me refer to that
so that's what that means.
We have seven more intimate
seminar classrooms for the
smaller classes that are
taking place on campus.
We have two event spaces.
One auditorium moot courtroom
which is a grander moot
courtroom, which we held the
Wagner Moot Court Competition
in just this past weekend.
And another ceremonial moot
court, which is designed again
for full scale mock trials and
have five cameras in each of
those spaces to capture
every aspect.
And then, additionally, during
the time that I've been on
campus we've continued
to build.
We brought online for the
Lawyering Skills Center eight
lawyer client simulation rooms,
or what we call flex
rooms. And like the medical
field, these spaces are
designed for simulations.
Simulations between the student,
who is the lawyer,
and an actor, who is hired and
plays the part of the client,
and the different types of
scenarios that the lawyer can
run into, et cetera.
So that's the physical
campus and we
continue to grow and build.
We'll be building four more
rooms, now that we're
retrofitting some of our old
campus buildings, or what
we'll call the East Campus.
So here's a quick example of
some of those classrooms. This
is a regular lecture hall in our
West Campus with Professor
Perlin teaching.
Actually I'll just go
back to that image.
You'll notice that there are
power outlets for all of the
students at each of the student
workspaces and there's
a white board in the background
but you'll see
slightly off image here is that
there's a smart podium.
And that smart podium is
connected to a completely
integrated AV system.
As well as, each one of our
classrooms has components,
i.e. a camera.
It also receives the VGA send
from the main podium PC so
we're built for class capture
and we did the infrastructure
right no matter the platform,
whether it be what we
standardized on, which was
Mediasite or something else.
So here's a typical event space
that we have. Again,
more projection capabilities.
Different types of scenarios.
It's a very flexible room.
And a little bit of the make up
of our campus in terms of
faculty which I think
is important.
We do have 60 full time faculty
members, 150 adjunct
and visiting faculty,
about 1,835 J.D.
students and 130
LL.M. students.
And that's just a quick snapshot
of what our campus
looks like.
So why don't we go on to
the reason why we're
here, today's topic.
So tracking the decisions which
led to New York Law
School's choice to utilize
Mediasite's
cloud server option.
That's my interpretation of the
way Sean originally posed
the question.
And when I was thinking about
today's presentation, I
thought, how do I address
that question?
And I thought the most effective
manner would simply
to be recount our experience
as a team as we addressed
these same issues and questions
and strategies and
problems that you all might
be facing today.
And walk you through the
process of infancy to
realization and see
how we got there.
Why we decided to use
Mediasite's system.
And so that's how we're
looking at today's
presentation.
Now to do that, I need to talk
a little bit about our
organization within New
York Law School.
The Office of Information
Technology is under the
fearless leadership
of John Southard.
He is our CTO.
He is our representative to
the administration and
collects data from all the
different divisions that I
collaborate with.
And those other divisions are--
we're a hybrid of New
York Law School employees,
SunGard partners, as well as
TriTech partners.
We all make up the Office of
Information Technology and
we're partitioned into different
divisions within IT
and those divisions are led by
different department heads, if
you would, including our network
services group, our
web services group, our
enterprise applications, our
desktop support services, our
academic technology, and so on
and so forth.
And that's where I come in.
Collaborating with all of those
folks is a very, very
important piece of
this process.
And not working in a silo
is very, very important.
I can't stress that enough.
Because at the end of the day
a Mediasite box is a PC.
And it's going to live
on your network.
And it's going to interact with
either a server that is
in your MDF or a server that
is co-load at the Mediasite
Sonic Foundry's headquarters.
And it's really important to
understand all of the pieces
that go into this type
of infrastructure.
And this architecture will
impact all of the different
groups and it may impact other
groups outside of IT,
including marketing and
communications.
When we create a player, for
instance, we have to work with
them to make sure that our
graphical standards match the
school's and their
departments.
And so working across the aisle
is just an important
piece of this.
And what I'm showing here
right now is back in the
spring of 2009 how our
group was set up.
And you see that at the time I
was the New Media Technology
Specialist before I received
the position of Director of
Academic Media Services.
And we were under the CTO and we
reported to the Director of
User Services.
And along my side hand in hand
was an instructional
technologist. And we made up the
Academic Technology stack
within IT and underneath us,
you see the work flow.
How it reached to different
groups.
It cut across from again New
York Law School employees.
We had content producers
working in our studio.
We had AV operationals team
which were provided by CTL,
which later became TriTech,
as well as other SunGard
instructional design
resources.
And they cut across different
sections, on campus to hybrid
on campus online resources
and then
exclusive online resources.
And you see the dotted line to
the provost of the school.
And all of those pieces
and the work
flow are very important.
And they're things
to consider.
So that's just a quick overview
of our organization.
So you see where we're coming
from, our perspective.
And then let's talk about
the exploration phase.
So, again, I was brought into
New York Law School in January
2009 with the goal to help a
team make certain decisions
around what media platforms we
would be utilizing on campus
so that we could launch the
new building for the
fall term of 2009.
Now that's a pretty condensed
timeline, of course, but those
were the goals.
And I thought the first phase of
that is very simply to take
a look at the landscape.
See what was happening.
Yes, the school started
in 1891.
Now here we are in 2009.
Obviously there have been
a lot of iterations of
technology, et cetera, on campus
between those dates.
And I didn't want to completely
abandon the old.
I wanted to assess what tools
and practices were happening
on campus so that when we
launched the new building,
there was kind of
a connection.
Yes, there would be
new technology.
Yes, there would be a
lot of new faces.
But for the faculty it wouldn't
be completely foreign
and the practices and processes
that they were used
to already wouldn't be
completely abandoned and there
would be some familiarity.
So what were we doing today
was the question.
And we were, as an AV group,
setting up modular equipment
in classrooms. A camera on a
tripod hooked to a laptop
which was encoding in Windows
Media formats and then that
team was taking all of that
media, transferring it to a
medium, and then the
following morning
uploading that to a CDN.
And what was broken
with that model?
Obviously, the physical steps,
and transfers, and hand offs
that had to happen, being a
physical medium-- and these
were chips and CDs.
People were even burning CDs for
long lectures, et cetera.
There are some issues
with that.
Physical medium can be
lost in a transfer.
It can get corrupted.
And when you're publishing
that to the web in that
format-- Windows Media format--
there's a client
application for the end user.
At that point we were already
Web 2.0 for years industry
wide as streaming media.
And to have to launch a client
application, I saw as a failure.
And I wanted to make sure that
whatever new formats we were
considering that was an
embeddable client
within a web interface.
And so that was one of the
reasons why Mediasite was
staged for success
on our campus.
Because, again, Windows Media
all of a sudden you ask the
question, what about your
Mac users and look
here too right here.
There's a growing number-- if
you refer to Cisco's site, I
think it's something like 70%
of incoming freshmen are
bringing Apples onto campuses.
And that's something
to consider.
And yes, you could play a
Windows Media file with a Mac
through QuickTime but you need
the flip for Mac plug-in, et
cetera, et cetera.
More calls to the help desk.
Eliminate those calls
to the help desk.
And that's something that
I was looking to do.
And I also looked around.
Again, back to the landscape.
What were other academic
technology platforms doing in
terms of internally
hosting servers
or using cloud servers.
What other platforms
were there?
There was Blackboard.
We were talking about Elluminate
at the time.
Later, Wimba Pronto.
And where did you want to
put those applications?
How did you want to
tie them to the
learning management system?
how did you want to incorporate
that content for
e-learning, et cetera,
et cetera.
All of those came into play.
And other considerations.
I already mentioned it, but
the condensed timeline was
something to consider.
We were there at this point
February, March of 2009.
We needed to get ready for
either a summer launch or a
fall launch.
And so I looked around.
I'm a content producer.
You heard about my bio.
In different contexts, I have
been creating digital media.
And I've been streaming them.
I've been distributing them
using different mechanisms.
And I looked at this problem
from that perspective.
I think that's an important
consideration because you may
be approaching this problem from
a different perspective.
You may be a networking engineer
and you may have a
completely different paradigm
and see all of the different
issues and have questions that
I didn't have at that time
without being equipped
with those tools.
And so that came into
it as well as, of
course, cost analysis.
You can skin a cat in 100
different ways and we were
looking at how to
skin that cat.
So as we were going through the
process, our CTO was going
through his budgetary cycle.
It was then March and we knew
that standardizing on
Mediasite had a fixed cost. And
he wanted to take a look
at all of the different options
because he didn't want
to commit to anything just yet,
which was important and
it was a good exercise
that we had to run.
So we did that.
We went through and we
researched other potential
technology platforms for
the new building.
And we started to go through
the process.
And at the time, we worked with
the AV integration team
from HB Communications
and they had slated
five Mediasite recorders.
Now I gave you the lay of the
land in terms of the physical
spaces that we were looking
towards and a total of 19
classrooms, three event spaces,
I saw a bottleneck.
And as you would too when faced
with the possibility of
all these requests for
recordings but only five
recordings to somehow
switch between all
these different spaces.
That was a challenge.
So there we went into that
continued exploration phase,
which included taking a look
at what else was out there.
So what was out there?
Well, here's a couple names.
And I invite you throughout your
process to see what else
is out there.
And I'll tell you why we went
through that exercise.
Well, I did tell you in terms of
cost, return on investment.
But an important component
here is staffing.
Because when you're looking at
a one year plan, a three year
plan, a five year plan, and
you're talking about using
five top of the line encoders
for the support of 19
classrooms, you have to ask
yourself, how are you
switching between them?
What type of labor?
At what point will your model,
your staffing model, your
technology model break.
And for us, it was very simple
because it was at five.
So if we received five
recordings at the same time,
we would suddenly be maxed out
and have to do the dance with
the faculty and the
administration of, well, sorry.
We can't support that
recording today.
And I can't speak for your
campuses but we don't want to
be in that business.
We want to be in the business
of providing academic media
services for our clients who are
the faculty and expect all
of these services to be
available at their disposal
which they should have.
So a quick rundown
of the names.
What other potential platforms
solve these same challenges.
Digital Rapids, V Cast,
Telestream, et cetera.
And, of course, coming
previously from The FeedRoom,
I also considered any offerings
that they had.
And now you may know
them under the
moniker of KIT Digital.
Then we went into the
modeling phase.
So as we were describing these
different scenarios for our
CTO, we wanted to show him
how it would work.
And he very much stressed the
concept that we should model
different work flows based on
the needs but not on our
current practices.
At the time we were outsourcing
our AV operations
work to a firm that, as is
the nature of old campus
facilities, they were running
into sticking points.
They were running into traps.
They didn't have enough
equipment to offer the
services and they would often
run into those same
bottlenecks I referred
to before.
And I asked, OK, so if we're
looking at the work flows and
the current needs, what users
will generate the content?
Where will the content
be stored?
And who will manage
that content?
In this case, the team of
Academic Media Services.
And then where will the end
users view the content?
So this is the life cycle.
This is the creation of content
from origin to end
user and how it gets through
all of the different phases
that it needs to.
And how much automation
could be involved,
et cetera, et cetera.
So we ran that exercise.
Again, at that point, we were
looking at five recorders to
support those 19 classrooms. And
this diagram-- this work
flow-- just kind of illustrates
how that content
would weave through our
technology and staff and
finally get to the end user
and in what formats.
And we ran this exercise
pretty extensively.
So again, you can see, again,
if you were to break it up
into three different phases.
The capture, the content
generation, the management and
the public communication.
That's the challenge that
we were looking at.
Another example, if we were to
rip those five recorders out,
or keep them and augment that
system with other platforms,
how that would end up looking
became very complicated.
There was a layer
of transcoding
involved, et cetera.
Different public facing.
CDNs that would distribute
this content.
And again, further
exploration.
This time self service class
capture to iTunes U work flow,
which is something
we considered.
Another way to do
that same thing.
And then after exhausting all
those different scenarios, the
case was finally made to our CTO
and administration that,
hey, we need to standardize.
If you were to run all of these
different platforms in
conjunction, you're increasing
the amount of staffing and
you're increasing other
technologies that we'll have
to augment.
And when we ran those numbers
and we thought about the long
term staffing and we thought
about what we wanted our AV
teams to be doing one year, two
years, three years down
the road, we finally came full
circle and we said, OK, take
us from the five recorders to
twelve, at least to start.
And at this point we've brought
other classrooms online.
The response about recording
has been very positive.
And so from that initial five
recorders, we now have
approximately 35 on campus, 4
that are mobile, 7 that are
integrated into the in-room
model in terms of right into
the AV rack, localized.
We have 12 that are in our main
control room or our NOC.
And in our simulation rooms
that I described earlier,
those are also right in the room
and they're integrated
very extensively with
the Crestron system.
The launch phase.
Turning on the new building.
So how do you now with the 12
recorders, take care of the
amount of requests that
you get in a day?
Again, you can handle
12 simultaneous.
But how do you do that?
Do you have operators in your
control room pressing start
record for every one of
those recordings?
Not if you want to also provide
in-room support, i.e.
a faculty who needs help with
getting this brand new
technology that's in front
of them up and
running at the time.
Again, remember we were
a new facility.
And they weren't familiar with
how to use the microphone, how
to use the Crestron touch panel,
how to use the in-room
presentation system, and
bring it all together.
So we need to free up hands.
So the way to do that
is using the
Mediasite scheduling system.
And this, for example, is just
a quick snapshot of how we
utilize and leverage the
automation capabilities of the
Mediasite system.
Again, back to the return
on investment.
You don't have AV operators, AV
technicians, pressing start
record for every recording.
You have programmers who are
taking a look at the AV
tickets of every day and in
the morning, or in the day
before, you are scheduling those
recordings to kick off.
And, not only kick off, but to
start, to stop, and to send an
automated notification to the
end users, whether the end
user and request would be the
Office of Academic Affairs or
it be the faculty or it be a
sick student through the
Office of Academic Affairs.
Those are all secondary
processes that you should be
considering at this time.
And then some assessment.
After we had launched and we had
a year of the new building
humming, so to speak, we wanted
to take a quick look
and revisit whether or not we
had made the right choices.
And we can present some
information to our
administration about the choices
that we had made and
kind of validate the direction
that we had taken.
And currently we have a total of
6,200 recordings that have
been created in our system.
And right now about 500 of those
are non-viewable but for
various reasons, whether they're
tests, et cetera.
But 5,761 total recordings in
just five semesters if you
include summer.
And that's a quick snapshot.
But these type of reporting
tools which, again are in our
cloud server, and through the
portal-- the Mediasite
portal-- help us illustrate
to the faculty and the
administration what's happening
with the recordings.
What recordings are
successful.
What recordings are viewable.
When faculty asks if within
the context of their
e-learning class or course, if
the students are viewing the
content, we have metrics that we
can demonstrate to them as
well as our CTO as well
as our administration.
We have metrics which we can
bring to them and say, this is
what we're doing.
This is what we're not only
doing with the technology that
we have but with the staff that
we have. And it validates
everyone at the end
of the day.
And helps the institution
be more informed.
Other metrics that are, I think,
crucial that we're able
to get from our cloud server are
a total break down of the
viewership and what platforms
those users
are viewing our content.
And this illustrates that since
the beginning of our
Mediasite time-- let's see, the
time line is from January
2009 through the end of our
fall 2010 semester-- the
breakdown is about 35% Apple
Mac OS, and the rest are
various platforms and
OSs of Microsoft.
And a very small
11 Linux users.
And then some others.
But you see that it breaks down
between Vista, Windows 7,
and XP because it is that
timeline from 2009 to now.
This is super helpful and it
helps inform discussions
internally to our team.
And then when you pull apart
what I would say more of a
deep dive into the metrics of
our latest completed semester,
which is fall 2010, then you
really see a more detailed
picture of the campus.
Obviously, our automation
has really picked up.
And we're doing over 1,000
recordings per semester on
campus through automated
practices.
And then the other big spike
or big bar that you'll see
here is the user generated
content that we're creating.
And this is within our Lawyering
Skills Center.
And these are those simulation
rooms that I described before,
but an important part of this
number is that there is no AV
technician involved in the
creation and management and
distribution and viewing
of that content.
That means that almost 600
recordings happened in the
fall semester without
an AV technician.
And when you're thinking about
scaling and you're thinking
about longevity, and you're
thinking about not burning out
staff and resources, it costs a
little bit more to integrate
with Crestron, but, I have
to say, this number is a
testament to how valuable
that is.
So again, other recordings with
the four mobile, we're
doing maybe 60 per semester.
But most of our business is
automated classroom and
seminar recordings.
And when you're dealing with
that many recordings, you have
to think about long term.
You have to think about
sunset strategies.
How much content are
you going to create
over years, over semesters.
And I've done a little
projection here as well as
some quick analysis just
so that you can see
how it's picked up.
So if we launched in the fall of
2009 and we did a total of
800 recordings.
The spring, 1,160.
Fall 2010, just over 1,500.
Based on those numbers and
considering that we're in week
9 of 16 weeks for the spring
2011 semester, we should hit--
based on our current numbers,
which are 1,055-- we should
hit somewhere in the realm
of 1,876 total
recordings this semester.
So was it worth it is
a question that
you should ask yourself.
So you guys standardized.
You worked with the cloud
architecture for the server.
All of the recorders are
obviously on campus.
What's been the response
from the faculty?
Well, good question if
I don't mind asking
it myself, I guess.
I'm just going to lay
this one out there.
This is an email from our
faculty-- one of our faculty
members-- just last week.
This was sent to the audio
visual distribution list, the
information technology
distribution list, our help
desk distribution list. And it
CC'd our CFO, our officer Fred
DeJohn, as well as our
CTO, John Southerd.
And, as you can read,
Professor Reza
was very, very happy.
He had not come into contact of
viewing any of the content
until recently for the first
time, but when he did, he was
thoroughly impressed.
He details how he could see
the document camera.
He details how the audio
was perfect.
And in the legal education
field, those two components of
a presentation are probably
the most important because
it's evidence that
can be displayed
on a document camera.
It's a presentation.
For years and years and years,
they've just had audio
recordings and transcripts from
those audio recordings.
So here we are.
Questions and answers.
Awesome.
Well, there's a ton of questions
coming in but great
job on your prepared remarks.
And those are some good
looking slides.
I think that people are really
excited about the fact that
you've been kind enough to allow
them to download the PDF
of that presentation because
it's so data dense.
I'm going to try to condense
because we used our time well.
I'm going to try to condense a
couple of questions together.
Now a lot of people had a lot
of questions about your
decision to run the back end
of Mediasite-- the server
site-- in the cloud.
One key question that kind of
sums it all up is about
reliability.
Did you have any concerns about
hosting the Mediasite
content outside of
your control?
Have you had any reliability
issues?
What did you take into
consideration in terms of
redundancy?
And that's symbolic of a lot of
questions about the cloud.
Well, as we were building the
infrastructure of the new
building and I talked about the
condensed timeline, I did
not at that point have any
experience building a
streaming media server
from the ground up.
And that looked like a really
big challenge and considering
we were bringing all those
recorders into the classrooms
at the same time that we were
launching the new building, it
was a major consideration for
us to keep that, which was
already at that point hosted,
because we had the Mediasite
Now package which was a single
recorder, which we used for
modular special events
with a hosted server.
And at that time, we had already
done successful live
webcasts that supported upwards
of 150 live viewers.
So there was some proof in
concept of what the hosted
server could do.
The question for us was how
would it work with the on
campus recorders?
What ports did we
need to open up?
How intimate did we need
to work with our
network services team?
There were challenges.
And you have to do a
lot of NAT work.
You have to do a lot of firewall
considerations.
We dedicated a VLAN
specifically to
our Mediasite recorders.
And I can detail and answer
more of those questions.
And we have that email
address captured but
that's a great answer.
So once you were able to mesh
together your network with our
cloud based services, you were
able to get things going it
sounds like.
And a big piece of it was by
having the server in a
secondary facility or co-load
here at Sonic Foundry's
headquarters, you have
established a relationship
with, hey, if anything goes
wrong, I'm pointing a finger
at you the vendor.
So the onus is on them to
back up that data and
to manage that data.
And so far we have had 100%
reliable content storage here
on site at the Sonic Foundry
headquarters.
We have had at moments corrupted
data occur locally
but it was never on
the hosted server.
We take it very seriously.
And thank you very much.
We're glad that's working out.
Another common set of questions
but just back to
housekeeping, people want to
know to clarify how many staff
did you have when you only
had five recorders?
And did you have to grow that
amount of staff that supports
the system when you
went up to 22?
So before we launched the new
building, we had a total AV
staff of about six folks.
As well as, we'd flex up
sometimes when we had larger
events, et cetera.
But when we launched the new
building, we went from 6 AV
operational folks to about 14.
And we ran from 14 to 16
staffers during that first
year and a half of the
new building launch.
And then through automation,
and through leveraging the
Mediasite system, and leveraging
Crestron RoomViews
automation tools, we've been
able to take that 16 number
down to-- we've leveled out to
about 10 AV staff, a revolving
door of about 10 AV
staff that will
support this system annually.
Got it.
Another question-- a couple of
people asked-- but they asked
are there privacy issues or
FERPA issues that have come up
when you decided as a policy
basis to use the cloud to
store the data?
Did you have any hurdles
to overcome?
I figure being a law school
you'd know every policy.
Well, more so for the question--
and this comes up
more in the context of digital
rights management-- where is
that content?
Who's guarding it, et cetera?
But the model was already
established on campus when we
hosted these Windows Media files
through a cloud server
previously.
There was no authentication
layer-- which is, I think, is
what you're really addressing
here-- to access that media
content because as the
institution, we look at the
asset to protect as the credits
and the degree that
the students receive from
the institution
rather than a lecture.
We have made sure that we've
addressed the digital rights
management by leveraging a
system like Mediasite which
puts a layer of the Silverlight
application on the
front end so that the viewers--
it would be much
more difficult for
them to quote
unquote rip that content.
And so far we have not had any
issues as they did at Cornell
in the fall.
When everyone knows that famous
case of the faculty
went on the tirade and then
that surfaced and was
distributed to the news.
Exactly.
So we have not [KNOCKS ON TABLE]
had any issues with that.
Excellent.
I'm going to go rapid fire with
the time we have left.
There's a bunch of people who've
asked in various forms,
do you have to have one
recorder in every
classroom to record?
Again, you don't.
And we didn't at first. You can
start with a lower number
and think about a Crestron,
what we
call, switching fabric.
But an Extron based switching
component that will help you
take classroom feeds to a
central control room and send
it to a specific recorder.
If that's what you want your AV
techs to be doing all day,
you can do that.
If you are looking for providing
services that you
haven't thought of today, i.e.
other in-room support, other
type of assessment tools,
quicker technologies, more
interesting studio work, you
can leverage the automation of
the Mediasite system and
create and expand the boundaries
of what your team
currently does using
automation.
But you can definitely
start small.
A bunch of people asked in a
bunch of different ways, but
it puts you on the spot.
They want to know what kind of
cameras you ended up using.
Well, I'll tell you what cameras
we're going to be
using in this upcoming batch of
six classrooms that we will
be integrating because we've
learned a lot from the new
building launch.
But we will be leveraging
Vaddio's automated tracking
system cameras for an upcoming--
because one thing
right now when you get into the
world of automation and
you've got 30 or 40 recordings
happening in a day, you don't
have enough operators to be
controlling the cameras for
all those rooms. We had Sony
cameras in the new building
but now we'll be switching to
the automated tracking system.
My friend, Tom, asks
this question.
What is the largest number of
simultaneous users you've ever
had connected at the same
time in your cloud
based lecture capture?
This from a person who
has done a ton on his
data center, so.
Sure.
So last night we had a WikiLeaks
event, which is a
big legal issue-- first
amendment issue-- that is
making the rounds in the news
cycle, of course, that
everyone is aware of.
And we supported 250
simultaneous live
viewers last evening.
And that's a big
event for you.
That's like--
Yeah, that's a big event.
And we have not gotten to the
point where we've leveraged
the CDN through, which
is-- anyways--
Through AT&T backbone.
AT&T backbone.
Yep.
Exactly.
Absolutely.
Let's see.
Just want to take the last good
questions here that-- OK,
a lot of people asked about
closed captioning.
Let me just read one.
How do you take care of the
closed captioning issue?
We haven't.
So right now, you're not
having it transcribed?
That's right.
That's fair enough and that's
true of a lot of
institutions out there.
It's good that Mediasite can
allow that to occur but it
doesn't mean everybody's
doing it.
Has this affected classroom
attendance?
Not negatively as we've
seen so far.
What it has helped is it's
allowed the Office of Academic
Affairs to ensure that there
is no excuses for these
students who are stricken with
a broken leg, suddenly have
caught the flu, et cetera, have
a death in the family.
Now what they're able to do is
they're able to make sure that
those students have access to
the materials that fulfill the
requirements of the course
that they're enrolled in.
And that has been, I think,
according to our Office of
Academic Affairs, a tremendous
success of the system.
Fantastic.
Well, that's it.
We're a little bit over time.
If you have one more thing
to say, go ahead.
One thing if you're not familiar
with the Mediasite
user group, and we didn't get to
your question today, please
reach out to me.
This is where my profile is
listed on the mug site.
But please feel free to
go ahead and do that.
That's excellent.
I want to thank you so much
for your presentation.
You did a fantastic job.
You've agreed to let people who
didn't get their questions
asked, if you provided your
email address or do it now,
re-ask your question or
whatever, he'll help us get
back to you over time.
I also want to say to all of you
who asked in a different
form of question for me, this
presentation is available
under the icon that looks like
links together below
our video right now.
It's available as a PDF to so
many of you who asked if this
presentation is available
for your own copy
of his great slides.
And also that this link
that you watched us at
is available on-demand.
As soon as we're done here, it
will recycle itself and it
will be available on-demand
for you to watch again.
So again, thank you
so much, Mike.
And I'd like to thank
[UNINTELLIGIBLE]
Services for producing another
great webcast. And thanks to
all of you.
We'll see you the next time.
Thank you.
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