[Air-l] Re: conference papers online - 2003

[Bram Dov Abramson]

bendavidson at totalise.co.uk:

>Back in October there was much discussion on this list about the
>availability of papers from the Maastricht conference online.  Or rather,
>there was much discussion about the fact that they weren't available.

Indeed.  I think part of the difficulty, though, was in folks talking 
past one another.  For example, Ben, you remember a discussion that 
went like this:

>  A
>number of listmembers argued that putting them online was a simple process
>that should take no time and were critical about the fact that this wasn't
>done.  Others appreciated there were two significant reasons for this not
>having been done - 1/ permission had not been sought from presenters and 2/
>it would actually take a lot of planning and implementation time.

On the other hand, what I recall is a discussion of conference papers 
that had been placed online.

(Specifically, there are 112 PDF, html, and SIT [unzippable] files 
available at http://aoir.org/members/index3.html.  They include full 
papers and extended outlines from AoIR 3.0.)

The fact is that they were password-protected.  The discussion I was 
interested in was around whether they should be.  (The consensus, as 
I understood it, was yes.)

The difference between the two discussions is the difference between 
building a house, and unlocking a door.  I think you will agree that 
the latter requires considerably less effort than the former.

>What is actually included on the CD and produced for online consumption will
>most likely depend on the amount of work we might expect from volunteers in
>putting together the relevant material.

Sure, and I'll e-mail you off-list to volunteer.  Speaking 
personally, though, the existing format at 
http://aoir.org/members/index3.html works just fine for me, and I'd 
just as soon volunteer my time to reproduce an /index4.html.  Hence 
...

>to create a CD-rom of proceedings (including videos
>of keynote speeches), that could be available for sale after the event, with
>proceeds paying for costs of production both of the CD and of online
>versions of papers etc

... I'm happy to help build something fancier, if that's what's 
proposed.  But I don't think that the discussion to which you refer 
is a reason to get fancier.  Fancier takes a lot of planning and 
implementation time.

cheers
Bram