Today, Shawn, Joanne, and I visited the SFSU
Bay Conference Center in Tiburon, along with Debra Singer and several other people affiliated with the venue.
The conference is August 9 and 10. Debra will try to book the venue for the 8th, so we can set up the day before. We'd like to present on the 9th because some people only come for the first day, but Debra may or may not be able to arrange that. Even if we set up on the 8th, our dynalamps will probably have to be moved to the side for the initial powerpoints, and brought back into place and recalibrated when it's our time to shine.
We'll present for an hour in the main presentation room ("SF Bay Hall"), and also have a separate demo area in the North Bay Room which can be running the whole time. Poster sessions will be in the South Bay Room on the opposite side of the building.
See below for a photo of the presentation space, a to-scale-ish top view, and the floorplan of the building. The active areas will probably be:
The table
Most likely a standard boom-stand dynalamp at the short edge of the table.
A vertical surface for pinning things up (cyan)
This will probably be a whiteboard or posterboard, slightly behind us and to the side. It could be lit with a magic-arm dynalamp hanging down from the beam, using some beam-hugging contraption that Joanne wants to build. Alternatively, a boom-stand dynalamp in the first row of the audience.
We need to do some measurements/calculations and see how far away the projector needs to be. We've been approved to interact with the beam, and facilities will provide a ladder. It's pretty high up.
A vertical surface for a live camera feed (red)
This could be the 5' x 3' TV that they have on site, but it's a little low and small, and I'm not sure it'll be visible in the back. Another option is to project on the huge screen behind us, using the site's projector up in the beam, a 1080p Optima of questionable trustworthiness. A third option is to project on the screen from our own projector (another one) hanging from the beam.
This needn't be in Realtalk at all if we can plug a video camera directly into the projector. But the most useful-for-the-future solution might be a dynapad-based realcam, ideally with HDMI out
directly from the tablet to eliminate networking (assuming camera quality is good enough).
In the first part of the talk, we might be using this projector for photos and videos, switching to camera feed in the second half. A realcam probably could handle this, with adequate network connectivity.
Maybe a big stretch of high-up wall for a timeline or something (orange)
Beam again?
The demo room
Probably just two or three boom-stand dynalamps.
Other notes:
Networking. The ethernet port is on the far side of the room, and we aren't allowed to plug our own switch into it. We could connect machines to internet with wifi, and connect them to each other with our own ethernet switch, but I'm not sure tailscale can make that work. (But if the ethernet switch itself is the one connected to wifi, that would probably work.) Or we could run the table, the pinboard, and the timeline wall off of a single machine. (But that still leaves showing photos and videos on the back screen.)
Lighting. We will want to bring our own lighting, so Realtalk can see the dots. The site has spotlights built into the ceiling, but they won't help us.
Cabling. Since we'll probably have a dynalamp on the ground and least one in the sky, we'll have to figure out where the machine will be and if cables will reach, or if it'll be easier to use multiple machines and deal with networking. Also, if our live camera has a tail, we'll need to get it to the projector somehow without people tripping over it.
A lot of challenges here, but this should be fun, especially if we work on this with a reusable "Travel Kit" in mind.
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