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Title:

I will also be at CodeRage II

Author: Bob Swart
Posted: 11/8/2007 7:59:04 AM (GMT+1)
Content:

Like Marco Cantù I will also be at CodeRage II (in the week from November 26-30, 2007), although I won't be present "live" the whole week, since I'll also be doing two Delphi masterclasses for the UK Developers Group on Monday November 26th and Tuesday November 27th on Database and Web Development Essentials.

For me, attending conferences and events always involves speaking as well (I can only remember a handful events that I attended without doing at least one session myself). The reason is simple: I just love to do (training) sessions and explain concepts and issues to fellow developers. And I agree with Marco Cantù that although a "live" conference is best of all, a virtual conference is better than nothing.

However... a big thing that I miss in a virtual conference is the interaction with the audience. I like to make some little jokes, and also need to look at the people to know if they "get" the message I want to tell them. And I often also depend on them to ask questions for clarification or exploration of related issues. More often than not, I come away from one of my own sessions with new ideas or experiences based on feedback from the audience. It's a learning experience for me as well. And that's not possible with a virtual conference.
In fact, while recording the "Webcam Fun for Delphi Developers" session, I realised that part of the fun would have been the interaction with the audience (pointing the webcam to someone in the audience and demonstrating the "motion detection" algorithm - or taking snapshots and manipulating them).
Another disadvantage of pre-recording a session is that I record them in small cuts of 2-5 minutes each. Often, I'm not satisfied with the result and re-take the cut. This means that for a one hour session, I'm easily taking a day to record it (the webcam session started at noon and the final takes were done at night, when it was too dark to view the webcam garden results live - you have to see the session for the final results ;-))...
But on the positive side: at least you will know for sure that when you attend my session, everything will work. There will be no beamer problems, no laptop crashing, no unexpected compilation or run-time problems that may take a few minutes to clear up or explain. And still all code is written "live" in the recording, so the end result may be a flawless session for optimal learning experience. Just a bit less fun and interactive for everyone involved.

So if you want to attend the Webcam Fun with Delphi 2007 session "live", feel free to attend the Software Developer Event on December 14th in The Netherlands, where I'll do it with an interactive audience. Hope to see you there (Marco will be there, too!) or "see" you at CodeRage II (or at one or both of the two masterclasses in the UK earlier that week).

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5 Comments

AuthorPostedComments
Jan 07/11/08 09:37:45Hi Bob. I am looking forward to hear your talk on the webcam stuff. Could you translate the dutch abstract please (being a dane, i can understand some of it but definately not all :o)
Bob Swart 07/11/08 09:40:31In this session, I'll demonstrate how we can use Delphi and a webcam to build fun and useful applications. We start by examining the Video for Windows API to communicate with the webcam. Then I'll start by building a snapshot application (for taking pictures), followed by pictures published on a web server (discussion bandwidth, picture quality and refresh rate). Then, we'll add a "motion detection" algorithm to the snapshot application, responding when a certain movement is detected.
Bob Swart 07/11/08 09:41:45The Dutch voice-over has yet to be recorded by me - so maybe there'll only be the original English version.
Making videos is hard work 07/11/08 21:21:39I certainly agree with you on the effort that it takes to make videos. I've been making Delphi programming tutorials for a few months now (http://codegearguru.com) and to make just a 5 minute video can take several hours. You've got to test to make sure everything works, record the session (which could require many takes and editing to get something satisfactory), make all the slides, render it to some usable format, upload it, write an abstract and so on. Anyway - I'll look forward to your presentation.
Bob Swart 07/12/06 09:05:09Source code for my Webfam Fun with Delphi session can be downloaded from http://www.bobswart.nl/CodeRageII/source.zip


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