[osol-mktg] Re: [osol-discuss] Google Summer of Code: Call for OpenSolaris Participation

[Tim Foster]

On Wed, 2006-04-19 at 09:00 -0400, Laura Ramsey wrote:
> Tim--love the idea of the flash demos.

Yep - good call Glynn! (credit where it's due)

>  We definitely need this--the opensolaris review we did with
> LinuxFormat was a long and very involved process. This approach you're
> suggesting below is great. Where to get the demos?  How to stage?

Well, there's a few options.

Obviously the best people to actually record the demos are the engineers
themselves, as they know the technology the best.

So, in a "teach a man to fish and he'll eat forever" frame of mind, I'll
spend some time tonight working out how best to record a vnc session and
convert to a movie we could put on a DVD. I've recorded vnc before[1],
just haven't got as far as converting that to mpeg though...

Once we have an easy to install bundle, we can point the OpenSolaris
engineering groups at the package, along with perhaps a sample demo, and
gather the rest of demos that way: given that hassle of working out how
to do it will be out of the way, it wouldn't take people as long to get
their demos together.



Alternatively, we just record everything ourselves, but that won't scale
quite as well, and we'd have to work out how best to showcase each
technology..

>  Format and packaging.

Right now, I don't really care - let's just work out if it's doable
first before getting too excited :-) If I have any success, I'll mail
more here.


Now, in terms of a summer of code participation (says he straying back
on-topic), with an emphasis on the "code" here, rather than "summer of
multimedia production", maybe we'd like to have someone come up with a
better way to demo OpenSolaris that doesn't involve passively watching
movies.

Given that we'd have now collected all of these demo movies, perhaps
we'd like a module that could be bolted into one of the existing live-cd
distributions to play our demos as soon as we boot, with an option to
"Exit" at any time, in order for the reviewer to explore the software
themselves ?  Or better yet, a default login that played the movies in
the top half of the screen, with a terminal window opened in the bottom
half in order for the viewer to play along ?

That would be a little more meaty, from a coding point of view...


	cheers,
			tim

[1]
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/timf/20050204#live_xliff_editor_demo
though Dan did a better job a few months later:
http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/dp?entry=a_screencasting_toolchain

> Tim Foster wrote:
> > Hi All,
> > 
> > On Tue, 2006-04-18 at 14:11 -0700, Jim Grisanzio wrote:
> >   
> > > > Sure, I can mentor someone if needed, although I'm not exactly sure
> > > > what's involved ;)
> > > >       
> > 
> > Me too :-)
> > 
> > I also like Glynn's list - I think the contents of /usr/demo from
> > Solaris Express get should get fleshed out with this new content
> > whenever it comes along[1]. (is /usr/demo also in other distributions ?)
> > 
> > Perhaps also find a way to bundle Brendan's DTrace toolkit in /usr/demo
> > if he's okay with that ?
> > 
> > I had started to think that us authoring a DVD that we could post to
> > journalists and reviewers which showed any recorded demos we have would
> > further lower the barrier for them to be able to write about OpenSolaris
> > -- they'd just pop it in their drive, get some popcorn and start to take
> > notes. [ it being a traditional movie-dvd, rather than an os-on-a-disc ]
> > 
> > Another solution is to get the various LiveCD distributions to the point
> > where they work seamlessly out of the box, and have an /etc/motd message
> > or splash screen on first login that says something like :
> > 
> > #
> > # Welcome to <dist> based on OpenSolaris
> > #   
> > #   for a demo of the technologies in OpenSolaris
> > #    Go to Launch -> Sound & Video -> OpenSolaris Demo
> > #   or type "/usr/demo/opensolaris-demo"
> > #
> > 
> > Doesn't have to be an all-singing, all-dancing media extravaganza - even
> > a script that loads the flash demos in sequence in a browser could be
> > enough ?
> > 
> > 
> > 	cheers,
> > 			tim
> > 
> > 
> > [1] and if we don't get any takers, I should really start to put some of
> > these demos together myself - doing flash movies isn't that hard...
> > 
> >   
> 
> _______________________________________________
> opensolaris-mktg mailing list
> opensolaris-mktg at opensolaris.org
-- 
Tim Foster, Sun Microsystems Inc, Operating Platforms Group
Engineering Operations            http://blogs.sun.com/timf

_______________________________________________
opensolaris-mktg mailing list
opensolaris-mktg at opensolaris.org