Capturing Conference Moments in Abstract Videos

It seems that time for speakers / posters is always too limited at conferences. Personally, it always seems I end up in some other room talking about my stuff and I miss a lot of the other presenters. Or sometimes I get major last minute work, and I miss a talk completely. And it's really annoying.

Wouldn't it be keen if anyone who is a speaker or poster presenter also had a 2 minute video synopsis of their work like an abstract produced and hosted on the Internet available for viewing? Of course, the first thing I'd hear back is "We don't have the time at a conference - it's rush, rush, rush." Yah, we all know that.

Of course, what if each presenter was able to take a digital camera, shoot a quick 2 minute raw video clip (or bunch of clips), either avi, mpeg, or mov format, from a digital camera or camcorder discussing key elements of their paper or poster and then email them off - no video production tools required? Wouldn't that be nice?

"But" sputters the conference organizer, "We still don't have time to produce and put on the Internet hundreds of little videos. Think of the costs of hand-producing each video and organizing them and working with all the different formats and making them look all the same! It would be impossible." Is this true?

Well, we did this with massive video production using a scalable three-tier client-server array hosted in a datacenter for Berkeley, and they had a lot more alumni than most of these conferences and workshops have presenters. All they needed was email and a digital camera - we did all the rest. So maybe this would be a great thing to finally get some of those ideas out there with real faces and personalities and voices, and a way to get a feel for the people behind the ideas and technologies.

So imagine that each conference Internet video would be for each party to discuss the results or other elements of their paper / poster, for those that cannot attend or miss that particular presentation - not as a substitute for a full presentation, but as an introduction to the subject discussed and the persons presenting.

Along with the clip there would be a description of the paper/poster for each video supplied by the presenter (such as an abstract), plus a link where the paper / poster could be obtained if desired. Finally, a brief personal bio / link to work webpage could also be displayed, so that they may be contacted by other interested people in the field.

It sure would be a fun project, and allow those who miss out through no fault of their own to still participate vicariously, and those who are there could still make full presentations. After all, we use "abstracts" don't we?