Technical and General Inquiries Regarding the Open Media Project

005 Watch/Vote it says "vote" but we only see Live Chat and Comments as options under the stream - have these replaced the voting feature and should it not be called "Vote"?

Our plan is to incorporate the embedded style voting similar to what YouTube has done using an approach like to JW Player's RateIt Add-on. The RateIT Add-on is running on the live stream, but this isn't linked back to the show that is currently playing. We're still working on rebuilding all of the video from the Drupal 5 archive in Drupal 6, but we've added the links to the base, unthemed, Views for the Show Archive.

# 006 Watch/Vote the Channel Schedules features is empty - we publish schedules here http://facil.channelaustin.org/guide/ - how will we incorporate our schedules into the site?

# 007 Watch/Vote Does Upcoming Shows list all remaining shows in the day? What time period? How does it differ from Channel Schedules?

All schedules are just Views of Airings. Once Airings are populated from an RSS feed, any number of scheduling designs are possible. The RSS feeds make Airings Payback server agnostic. Since starting the project, we've been able to get RS support added to Leightronix and Synergy servers as well have changes made to Telvue's RSS rolled into the latest 3.5 release. Whether it's a Block with 4 upcoming shows on Channel X, every show playing that day, or every Airing on any channel, you can create a customize those with Views. The key is to get the playback information out of closed systems (the playback servers) into a standardized content type so that we can share the View and theme work that is already being done.

# 010 Classes re: payment data - Are you keeping records of all online transactions for class registration in CiviCRM?

Yes. We are using Events within CiviCRM to manage our classes, each class has it's own event type for ease of reporting and all our education director does every few weeks is copy classes and give them new dates:

Using the "Find Participants" function in CiviCRM, you can then pull up any report imaginable based on class type, dates, etc:

# 012 Classes re: Availability We now have a feature to see the class schedule and how many seats are still open and available in that class: http://facil.channelaustin.org/classes/ - We see you have policies for minimum enrollment and cancellation, what about when a class is full? Is there way to prevent people registering for the class when it has reached its maximum and a way to set that limit? Is that a simple CiviCRM feature?

All of the above are available by default from the CiviCRM event management interface, for each event (or class in this case), you can set max participants:

Registration is automatically closed once an event (class) becomes full.

# 013 Classes re: Certification - Once a person completes a class and then becomes certified where is that record kept? In CiviCRM? Is that data used by MERCI to determine what reservations can be made?

The approval process here is manual (i.e., even though a student has taken a class it doesn't necessarily mean they are certified). Due to this, our education director or teachers are responsible for adding students that successfully complete a course to the relevant CiviCRM group. We have four or five certification groups now I believe, Accelerated Field Certification, After Effects, Intro to Field Production, Studio Certification...:

These groups can be used by MERCI to restrict access by using the CiviGroup Roles Synch module (distributed with the latest versions of CiviCRM) -- which is what we are doing here at Denver Open Media.

# 014 Classes re: Instructor - We keep track of the instructor data for each class. It doesn't appear to be a feature on your site. Would that be an easy custom data field to add and could we then associate specific certifications with instructions as well?

It is relatively easy to add new custom data fields in CiviCRM for purposes like that -- you would first go the "Administer CiviCRM->Custom Data", then create a data group to apply to events with the Instructor Info custom field. CiviCRM has decent documentation on their site for most of the administrative functions, here is a link to the section on managing custom data groups.

032 My Reservations Is the ability to restrict the duration of a reservation already a built-in feature? Most checkouts of field equipment here are for 24 hours, whereas studios and computer labs are for much less time.

Yes. Because items in Buckets are interchangeable, they share the max hour setting. On Resources, each item has it's own max hours.

034 My Reservations When we do equipment checkouts here, we try to schedule the checkouts so that two or more people are not checking out equipment at the same time. There probably isn't a provision for that in the current MERCI code, correct? So in theory, you could have 12 people make a reservation for equipment all at the same time?

Having staggered start time is something the university checkouts I've worked at would be interested in. When just one class is assigned a project that requires equipment, you can end up with 20 students lined up at the checkout 5 minutes after that class ends. If two classes happen to assign projects the same day, there is no way the checkout can get everyone equipment in less than 45 minutes which normally makes some students late for their next class.

So if we add a max reservation starts to MERCI's settings and you set that variable to 12, the 13th user would get a message like...

There are already starting at 2:30PM on March 4. Please adjust the start time of your reservation.

What about returns? Do you care when how many people are trying to return equipment at that time?

036 My Reservations We assume there is a way to "flag" a producer (i.e. if suspended for a violation) to prevent them from having access to make reservations. Correct?

We currently don't have anything configured to do this, but only because it hasn't come up. The permission to checkout equipment is determined by Roles. All of the MERCI related roles at DOM are synchronized through CiviCRM. Currently the only way to remove a users access to equipment would be to change their membership status in CiviCRM. I think it would probably make sense to add a permission settings to MERCI in addition to Administer MERCI called something like Suspend Access to MERCI. The Suspend Access to MERCI permission could be added to a role. Users could be manually or problematically added to the role. Instead of just losing access to make Reservations which will likely result in a call or email, this would allow a custom error for those users saying something like...

Your access to make Reservations has been suspended. Please contact to find out why you've been suspended and access restore your access.

I've added this as a feature request to MERCI's issue queue.

037 My Reservations Rather than individual pieces of equipment, what about configuring MERCI for packages or kits?

This was requested by DOM as well. Specifically for classes or studio shoots that always use several pieces of equipment. What we talked about was creating a page that "prepopulate" the form adding 1 of every item you'd normally reserve. You could then customize the dates as well as add or remove equipment you didn't need that day. You'd still be subject to the same validation and availability, but it would save you some time selecting the items.

I've added this feature request to MERCI.

This is definitely possible, but because of the N number of items possible it will require some additional code in MERCI.

040 My Reservations Do people sign paper contracts when they come to pick up equipment at your facility? Have you thought about keeping "digital signature" on file?

Printed contracts are already on MERCI's short term roadmap. But having tried to enforce "contracts" similar to what DOM's members sign in a university environment, I know that the signed "contract" only helps to serve as evidence in a small claims case and doesn't hold any real legal teeth. If student dropped out, we had very little leverage to get them to return equipment despite our signed "contract".

I'd love to see a touch screen and a Flash widget to have users sign the form itself! I'm all for anything that moves away form printed contract.

045 My Reservations re: Special Requests & Production Plans -- We have special request forms that producers complete and are approved by staff, when producers what to reserve and use resources out of the normal procedure. For example, if a producer wants to make a reservation for more than 21 days out in advance, he or she can do so by submitting a special request. There are also Production Plans that are required along with a Special Request. We'd like to get these forms on the site and be associated somehow with the Reservation section.

DOM uses the Webform Module to create a form like this...

http://www.denveropenmedia.org/meetingspace

If the request is approved, someone in a role with Administer MERCI permissions makes the reservation. That permission allows users to create reservations that break all of the date and time based validation, but not inventory. Even with Administer MERCI privileges, you can't create a conflicting reservation.

056 Create Show re: Series This is related to an earlier point. Although in the project area, when creating a project, there is a choice for project type (None, Series, or Non-series). We're assuming that information appears on the administrative side. Does that metadata carry through with the other information entered on the Create Show form?

The plan is to have all settings from the Project be the default for each show added to the Project, but that code hasn't been added yet.

058 Create Show re: Timeslot Theme When a program is submitted and designated to that Timeslot, after it premiers, how many encores does it have? Are the encores as well as the premier automatically scheduled? Can you set the number of encores to play?

We don't do anything like that at DOM. Our most popular shows have likely aired hundreds of times. Unfortunately we haven't been able to accurately track that until we updated to Drupal 6 and started populating Airings. Airings keep track of the number of times a show has aired on any of our channels. Using RSS to pull this information makes the Broadcast Synchronization module playback server agnostic. We could have a Princeton, a Synergy, and a Leightronix running our 3 channels and manage and track the scheduling from the Open Media System. How cool is that!?!

With Airings being a Show's "permanent record" we can now support a limit on encores, but there is no code to support that yet.

# 059 My Profile Can anyone who creates a login name and password, then create a Profile? Or is the My Profile feature only available to paying members?
# 061 Create New Account What configurations are you using for people creating new accounts? I.e. can anyone create an account, or does it require staff approval?

A lot of thought went into revising this when we upgraded the site. The buzz term here is increasing the level of engagement. Profiles are available to everyone, but only members can create Projects, reserve equipment, etc. The goal of this approach is to gradually increase the level of participation from passive viewer > voter > Project participant > Producer

Do you strictly require a Creative Commons designation for any and all programs submitted?

We require it for any show that was produced using our equipment for free. The design is (not sure if its working 100%) that if a project has any equipment reservations against it (using MERCI), then they are forced to submit with one of two CC licenses. If they don't use our equipment to produce their show, we just encourage it, not require it. That's part of our membership agreement, that producers follow our CC policies.

On Blip.TV the field for licensing allows for the All Rights Reserved in addition to the various Creative Commons options. Could that be an alternative we use? We think that we would get some serious blowback if we make it a requirement that any show submitted be done so under Creative Commons.

This entire endeavor (networking public access TV stations and leveraging the best content) will not work without Creative Commons. Our hope in this grant was only to work with stations with a strong committment to CC. That being said, its not our intention to dictate the approach you take. I think that stations should implement incentives for it. That could be financial or otherwise, but the incentives must be strong enough to counter the significant investment corporate media has made in convincing the public that "All rights reserved" is in their best interest as a content creator. It is not, but we can't hope to counter their message effectively, so the best we can do is create incentives.

At D.O.M. if a producer wants to keep "all rights reserved" they either have to use their own equipment, or pay us rental fees for ours. If they will go with CC, they can use the equipment for free. It has worked well for us.