Howdy ModSquad! Great hangout chat in IRC yesterday, and awesome to get a chance to talk with you all. If you weren’t able to make the chat, you can find a full log of what we discussed, but here’s a recap of some of the high points:

Foreign Language videos

We are always looking to add mods who are native speakers, but in the absence of that, non-English videos tend to languish. Let’s reverse that trend by doing the best we can to get those out as fast as we can by:

• Lifting descriptions from the WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. site as-is (no Google Translate!) and add a link to slides if we can.
• If we need a description for the talk, take it from the WordCamp site as-is as well, adding the speaker names to match our standard formatting.
• Viewing the video for technical issues (lighting, sound, etc)

If we can do those things, then the video is ready to publish. We can always have someone double-check it later, but let’s not hold them hostage like we do now.

Curating content

We had a good discussion around how to better feature the that truly represent the best of what WordCamp is about: Great presentations, educational content, and though provoking discussions. We see these every day, but the way wordpress.tv is set up now, they get lost pretty easily once they fall off the home page.

One idea, which is not quite ready for implementation is curating content for syndication to other outlets (YouTube, G+, Facebook, etc.) as well as publishing here. The other thing we can do is to start making use of blog.wordpress.tv as a place to post “Staff Picks” blog posts, which I’d like to kick off soon. Any volunteers to go first? Let me know in the comments.

Helping WordCamps directly

We discussed how a large number of videos never make it to wordpress.tv. One big pain point is the difficulty in getting good videos (clear picture, sound, etc.) that are publishable. We reject a lot of videos over issues of quality; one way we can help with this is to get better documentation in place for WordCamp organizers—who are not video expert necessarily—to help them to take better quality video.

On the other side, one reason we never see video submissions in the first place is that it is hard for WordCamp organizers to find the necessary time and resources to do post-production. Sadly many videos end up in this graveyard, and as mods we never see them, but one way we can help is by actually doing the post-production centrally (powered by fearless mods) to take this off organizers hands.

The dream scenario here would be to have video uploaded to wordpress.tv the same day as the event, have mods perform simple edits like trim the ends, add titles, etc. Once that is done, we could publish them right away, instead of months later (or not at all) as happens currently.

Get involved!

If you have a passion for docs, a background in video, experience in videoing meetups/camps, or can recommend a friend, speak up! We are moving forward on docs and post-processing support, and would love your help.

Phew, that was quite a recap. Again, thanks to everyone that made is (plus anyone who was there in spirit) and I will see you in the queues!

#docs, #hangouts, #i18n, #post-processing, #recap