November 25, 2014. Öppna Kanalen Växjö (OKV) gets a phone call. The presenter solution that we had been waiting for, to broadcast government meetings on the web, would not be. Reason: the work was too involving. Time to show the power of open source!
December 17, 2014. We make a test broadcast from Höör city council meeting, with a very early version of CM Agenda, a Drupal open-source tool built by collaborative efforts in only two weeks!
January 28, 2015. The first real web broadcast is made using CM Agenda, a tool that was developed with very short-notice by a group of dedicated people. See http://okv.se/play/hoor/kf150128. The local newspaper wrote about the web broadcast premiere: http://www.skanskan.se/article/20150206/HOOR/150209658/1020/-/fullmaktig...
This is a post to describe the power of collaboration. And to ask for support to take this even further.
@jesper.rojestal wrote Media: Solidtango
@TwoD wrote Solidtango PopcornJS wrapper
@kreynen contributed updates to Media: Solidtango and wrote and reused PopcornJS, Media Event, and CM Agenda
@kristofferwiklund wrote the (soon to be committed) cm_agenda_live and updates to Media Event
@westis themed the elements of CM Agenda on http://live-media-event-testing.pantheon.io then http://okv.se/play/hoor/kf150128.
Would you like your name or your channel on that list? We need $$ to add documentation, to improve the install process and to add additional features. Almost all of this has been paid for by OKV. Although we are dedicated to make all code available as open source, cost sharing is another important part of collaboration.
Do you want to help us take this further?
Comments
Interested in helping
We have an identified need to integrate this CM Agenda capability with our Cloudcast videos.
And we've outlined the steps
And we've outlined the steps required to make that happen in https://www.drupal.org/node/2395025. If Tevlue, Cablecast, or the next VOD provider that gains popularity with community groups wants to leverage this functionality, they just need a Popcorn media wrapper. Mozzila funded the development of the wrappers for YouTube, Vimeo, and SoundCloud. Archive.org wrote their own wrapper. OKV funded the Solidtango wrapper. As soon as a functioning wrapper is avilable, the other other pieces of the configuration just work. If a organizations wants to move from YouTube to Archive.org, the chapter and speaker will continue working.
Daniel - this looks awesome,
Daniel - this looks awesome, the work you guys have done is fantastic.
@jdcreativity - my understanding is that Cloudcast/Telvue cannot integrate with Popcorn at present and does not plan to based on their player's setup.
However we have just begun developing a Drupal Cloudcast chaptering solution for VCAM, ORCA, and quite a few other stations in Vermont. As soon as the code is in a usable state we will share it. It integrates with the media_cloudcast module.The plan is for it to be finished sometime in March, but I don't have a solid date that I can guarantee it will be completed by. It utilizes XML feeds to pull chapters for particular Cloudcast video ids to grab the agendas that are created in Cloudcast. You will also be able to create agenda items in Drupal if desired, but for most of the use cases we are developing for all the chaptering is done in Cloudcast. You are able to choose if you want to attach the chapters to file entities or node entities, and then it will display the chapters next to the video player where applicable. There is a configurable settings page that integrates with cron runs or else lets you pull in feeds manually for your entire Cloudcast feed or else just a particular number of recent items.
Again, we will definitely be sharing this module as soon as it's in a state worth sharing, so feel free to check back in if you haven't heard from me by the end of March on this. We're working on getting the core functionality done based on the needs of the stations funding it first.
disappointment
@emilyf - I cannot express how incredibly depressed this makes me. It makes me consider changing video providers / servers.
If the solution you are developing is released on DO - then perhaps I will be lucky enough to use it.
@jdcreativity don't be too
@jdcreativity don't be too depressed. Solidtango realized that a Popcorn wrapper wasn't really in line with their business model either, so OKV funded that work themselves. If there really is an API for Cloudcast that that allows jumping a player to a point in time and that information is shared via documentation or code, we'll be able to create a Popcorn wrapper based on that.
@emilyf Unfortunately I think you missed one of major points of @westis post. The developers involved in creating these solutions committed daily (if not hourly) to the pubic sandboxes we were working in. Issues and ideas were vetted publicly via Drupal.org issues and IRC.
Telling people that there is a solution coming, but that we can't see the code really only serves to kill attempts at funding the development of a truly open solution. MNN is infamous for doing this. In 2015, there is no reason not to share work in progress on open source solutions publicly other than to create a competitive advantage for a specific vendor.
All VOD vendors offer essentially the same services at this point. The Mozilla Foundation was forward thinking enough to see that each vendor's custom APIs created lock in. This is the same reason we pushed to get PHP Stream wrappers support in core during the Open Media Camp back in 2009. That work is the reason sites can switch the location of a video from Vimeo <-> YouTube <-> Archive.org and maintain the look and feel of the site.
Vendor specific solutions built on top of a media_[PROVIDER] module undermines a lot of work designed to prevent this type of unnecessary vendor lock in.
The Swedish, Norwegian, and Dutch developers contributing to projects like https://github.com/Frikanalen/frikanalen and http://www.casparcg.com/ have a much better understanding of what a commitment to truly open solutions look like... as well as how to collaborate openly. Because I will have less time for community media work, I am only working on projects that are truly open a collaborative and directing other requests for support to developers and organizations who really live up to their commitments to develop and communicate openly.
Hopefully everyone who's been following this project can see the difference in OKV's approach to CM Agenda vs. solutions that perpetuate vendor lock in and we continue to reward the open and public and move away from the closed and private.
Reason for Optimism
I want to say thank you to everyone involved in this conversation. Thanks to @westis, @emilyf and @kreynen. Certainly being honest can mean being brutally honest. This project that has a much more meaningful bottom line than most. It is a matter of love and pride for some of us. It was easy for me to get riled up about a great solution (CM Agenda)‚ crushed by an apparent dead end (Cloudcast and Popcorn) and disappointed by the perpetual bickering and moral posturing.
I agree that I've seen a lot of positive conversation about this project in the IRC. So to that I do think this kind of open conversation is possible.
I've tried to reach out to Telvue on this and have continued the comments on the issue over there: https://www.drupal.org/node/2395025#comment-9608637