Conference recording

Technically it is one to three locked off cameras, a feed from the projector for the slides and, above all, audio taken straight from the desk rather than from a camera microphone. An operator sits through the whole block, so this is counted in days, not hours. For a one day conference with two rooms, budget for two crews or accept that one room goes unrecorded.

Why companies do it: a technology conference had eight hundred people in the room and twelve talks. A year later those videos on YouTube had more views than the entire attendance, because a talk about a specific problem can be found six months on. A recording is the cheapest way to turn a one day event into twelve months of content.

What to settle in advance: speaker consent to being filmed and published, access to the audio desk, a slide feed and a camera position nobody will walk through. In practice that means meeting the venue technician the day before. Post is then mostly trimming heads and tails, cutting in the slides and adding subtitles, so two to five working days depending on the number of talks.

When it is not worth it: when the talks are not good. A recording does not improve weak content, it documents it. There is equally little point filming everything if you know you will publish three sessions. And mind the format: an hour long talk does not work on social, that calls for clips, which is different work and a different budget.

Before a conference we ask one question: which three talks will you definitely publish? The answer decides where the cameras go and what the budget is, instead of covering everything evenly and having half of it never watched. Try it today: check how many recordings from last year's edition passed a hundred views.