Building the Opencast Community

1. Building the Opencast Community

2. Brief history • The Opencast Community • Opencast Matterhorn • Global communication and collaboration • Collaboration amongst academic institutions • Building a global community • Community Source vs. Open Source

3. Opencast… …is an initiative driven by higher education institutions to empower… • … institutions to make informed choices about capture, processing, and distribution infrastructure for audio/video, • … faculty to teach courses and share knowledge with their students and learners worldwide..., • … students to access and shape media into a more meaningful tool for learning, • … everyone to easily find and engage with educational video, audio, and other rich media...

4. The Opencast initiative • Podcasting hype since 2006

6. The Opencast initiative • Podcasting hype since 2006 • Strategic relevance of academic video • Proprietary solutions, formats, and distribution prevalent (iTunes U, YouTube) • Opencast talks with US and European academic institutions initiated by UC Berkeley in 2007

7. The Opencast idea(s) • Open (Broad-)Cast • Open Source • Open Technology • Open Formats • Open Content • Open Exchange

8. Mission statement The Opencast community is a collaboration of individuals, higher education institutions and organizations working together to explore, develop, define and document best practices and technologies for management of audiovisual content in academia. Through the mailing list, website and collaboration among its members, the community will strive to offer guidance and information to help others choose the best approach for the delivery and usage of rich media online.

9. The Opencast Community • Website • Mailing list • Newsletter • Resource exchange • Cooperations, knowledge exchange, projects

11. The Opencast Community Metadata Steeple Projects (UK) Licensing Pedagocical implications Projects, cooperations Resource exchange Technical discussion

12. Deliberations on existing solutions • (virtPresenter) • (Re-Collect)

13. Lesson No. 1 • Licencing is crucial!

14. The REPLAY experience • 2006-2009 project to build an Open Source media mangement system for ETH Zurich (and beyond?) • Well-received • No community around early releases • Transition to Opencast Community and Opencast Matterhorn

15. Lesson No. 2 • Licencing is crucial! • Don’t overestimate your product!

16. Lesson No. 3 • Licencing is crucial! • Don’t overestimate your product! • Building a community around early life cycle of a product is difficult.

17. The Opencast Community Metadata Steeple Projects (UK) Licensing Pedagocical implications Projects, cooperations Resource exchange Technical discussion

18. Opencast Community Federation of institutions and people • attracted to the Opencast idea • exchanging ideas, experience, and knowledge • committed to building an Open Source solution putting into effect the OC idea

19. Mission statement The Opencast community also supports community-driven projects to solve common issues in management of academic audiovisual content. These projects will include open source software development, such as Matterhorn, and research focused projects. The Opencast Community will support these projects through feedback and participation in project-related activities.

20. Opencast Matterhorn and the Opencast Community Metadata Steeple Projects (UK) Licensing Opencast Matterhorn Pedagocical implications Projects, cooperations Resource exchange Technical discussion

21. Opencast Matterhorn and the Opencast Community Steeple Projects (UK) 13 academic institutions > 100 institutions> 500 individuals

22. UC Berkeley University of Nebraska-Lincoln Northwestern University Indiana University University of Saskatchewan University of Toronto ETH Zürich University of Osnabrück Cambridge University University of Vigo University of Catalonia University of Copenhagen Jozef Stefan Institute Opencast Matterhorn consortium

23. Opencast Matterhorn... … is a free, open-source platform to support the management of educational audio and video content. Institutions will use Matterhorn to produce lecture recordings, manage existing video, serve designated distribution channels, and provide user interfaces to engage students with educational videos.

24. Opencast Matterhorn

26. Matterhorn Teams • Schedule and capture • Services & architecture • Engage • Admin • Distribution • BAUXUI

27. Facts and figures • Preparatory work 2008-2009 • Launched in earnest on July 1st 2009 towards 1.0 in June 2010 • Educational Community License, Version 2.0 • SOA • OSGi • Java

28. Dissemination & adoption • Opencast Community as aggregator and matrix for Opencast Matterhorn- requirements analysis- feedback for early releases- transparency on further developements • Base camps as nucleus for (national) networks and communities

29. UC Berkeley University of Nebraska-Lincoln Northwestern University Indiana University University of Saskatchewan University of Toronto ETH Zürich University of Osnabrück Cambridge University University of Vigo University of Catalonia University of Copenhagen Jozef Stefan Institute Opencast Matterhorn consortium

30. Matterhorn Base Camps • University of Nebraska-Lincoln (US) • Saskatchewan (Canada) • University of Vigo (Spain) • Loughborough University (UK, Steeple Projects) • University of Tel Aviv (Israel)

31. Lesson No. 4 • Licencing is crucial! • Don’t overestimate your product! • Building a community around early life cycle of a product is difficult. • Localization is key to covering national “markets” (networks, language)

32. Global communication • Communicating and collaborating across 10 time zones • All teams transatlantic • Approx. 10 weekly meetings • Adobe Connect Rooms provided by University of Vigo • Skype as backup, for dyadic and small groups – and for important meetings (due to audio constraints in AC) • IRC for immediate communication mainly for developers • Face-to-face meeting (Zurich kick-off in September 2009)

33. Funding situation • Initial funding by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation… • … and participating institutions (“match” funding) • No funding for „Year 2“ from Mellon • Matterhorn partners filling the gap

34. Lesson No. 5 • Licencing is crucial! • Don’t overestimate your product! • Building a community around early life cycle of a product is difficult. • Localization is key to covering national “markets” (networks, language) • Always have a plan B!

35. Community Source? • Code over community • Restricted access to code • Influencing development • Open code source • Open for contributions • Transparent & inclusive • Requirements gathering, “Cobbler” target organization

36. Planet Opencast Opencast Community http://www.opencastproject.org/ Opencast Matterhorn http://wiki.opencastproject.org/ Lists community@opencastproject.org matterhorn@opencastproject.org IRC #opencast (irc.freenode.net)