Midwinter Saturday: Presidential Candidates Forum

The first of my big technical challenges of Midwinter, filming the ALA Presidential Candidates Forum and editing and posting the video, is nearly complete, except for several hours of computing time to make the necessary file conversions and transfers, which will mostly happen overnight while I'm asleep. I'm calling this one mostly successful. Leonard Kniffel and I had three video cameras in all: the main AL camera trained on the candidates Kenton Oliver and Roberta Stevens as they spoke, my personal camcorder that swung around to film the questions from the audience, and a Flip camera intended to film moderator Loriene Roy. I say "intended" because that one did not work well at all; the Flip cameras are useful for many things (most AL Focus videos are filmed on them) but they do not handle distance well. The most significant glitch—call it a first-timer's mistake—came at the start of the Forum. I didn't capture the candidate's full opening statements on the main camera. Since I'm unable to present them equitably, I decided to omit both. Members can read statements from both candidates in the March issue of American Libraries. A more amusing mistake on my part came when audience members were at three different microphones with questions and I guessed wrong which would be called. As I awkwardly jerked the camera around trying to find the right microphone, Elizabeth Ridler began her question by introducing herself and declaring herself a tech dinosaur. You and me both, apparently.