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Tell me who you liked on the AAW symposium

john lucas

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I will be away from the computer this weekend so won't be able to access any of the symposium until at least Monday maybe Tuesday. So I would like to ask you all to to post who or what you liked about this virtual symposium. I don't know if any of the vendor demos will be available after this weekend. I know they said the demo videos will be available for 10 days. I'm hoping all the content will be. Anyway if there is anything that impresses you, new tool, new techniques, how a presenter worked, the critics, anything else. Then hopefully it will point me in the right direction to get the most out of what I can see. Would also like to hear just in general how you thought it went and what could be improved.
 

Donna Banfield

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I just finished watching Glenn Lucas. I'm sorry to admit that this is the first time seeing him demonstrate. But glad I remedied that today. Lots of very good information, and very useful explanations of things I already knew, but glad to have another way of explaining it when I teach that method as well. John, you've probably seen Glenn demo a few times, but you asked who to watch, and I'm sharing my experience.
 

john lucas

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Never seen Glenn. He and I have been demonstrating at.the same time so other than shaking hands in the hallway I have not seen him.
 

Roger Wiegand

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I enjoyed both demos today, and also the panel discussion though I found a lot of it mystifying given that I'm not an artist and apparently not programmed at all to think that way.

I've been wanting to try to make some bread proofing bowls in the style of the traditional rattan baskets used for that purpose, perhaps in the morning I'll try to see whether turning beads on the inside of a bowl is even possible. I doubt the bread will know the difference, but the bread makers might well think it's important.

I'll certainly be watching for the next two days.
 
Joined
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Everything was top notch. A nice balance with a demo of a more difficult turning project, a more basic one followed by an excellent panel on the highly inspirational and artistic side of turning. The gizmos and gadgets slide show was also very useful. I think Glenn, Rudy, Rob and the panel members all did very well. Also, the AAW staff and moderators did a great job on day one of our first virtual symposium. Other than one very rude doorknob attendee who said he didn’t care where everyone was from when people were politely introducing themselves during chat, it was as good as it can get for an “at home” Symposium. The auction was nice too but given the circumstances understandably seemed to have less content (not in quality though as the turnings are amazing). Worth the $20.20 admission price already three times over.
 
Joined
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I want to go back now and rewatch a bit from today. Looking for a link on the web site. Is there one up now or will it be later?
As I recall links to view the demos will not available until after the symposium concludes.
 
Joined
Dec 8, 2016
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The Lucas demo was pure gold to finally see a clear execution of Raffan's bowl beading technique. I think I've seen 3 videos where Raffan does it, but the camera never really shows how the gouge presents/moves. You see his back, or top of his head or something. But never the actual cut.
 
Joined
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Loved the Glenn Lucas demo. I had to leave for a little bit and only caught the end of Rudy's, now I'll have to watch the replay because it looked like he did a great job.
 
Joined
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Anyone know how to turn off the chat window pop-ups?

The chat icon is in the center of the bottom of the screen and randomly pops up to cover the lower part of the center of the screen where the work is going on.

I tried multiple times to turn off the chat pop ups, or move the icon somewhere else, but could not find a way. I finally opened the the chat window, made it as small as possible and repositioned it in the least used corner of the screen.

If someone knows how to disable the feature at the participants end that would be helpful.

I sure hope the chat pop ups are not being recorded.
 

Dave Landers

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Anyone know how to turn off the chat window pop-ups
You can't do that exactly. But (assuming you're on a computer and not a tablet/phone) you should be able to click on the Chat icon which will bring up the chat window, then make it as small as it will let you, and move it somewhere out of the way (or slide it off the edge of your screen, if your computer will let you do that).

I'm using two monitors (my laptop and the big screen in the den) so I just opened the chat and Q&A windows and slid them over to my laptop.
 

Dave Landers

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I sure hope the chat pop ups are not being recorded.
Chat is not part of a zoom recording, although the hosts are allowed to capture it separately (as a text file, and just those public messages "to all" not private messages). Not sure if they're going to do that - there was some useful info amongst the random chatter.
 

Roger Wiegand

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The chat window can be annoying, but not nearly as bad as the guys who think their personal conversation in the row behind you is more important than what the demonstrator is doing at the front of the room. The chat window is easy to ignore if you have a big enough screen.

Here are instructions for disabling the notifications: https://allthings.how/how-to-disable-chat-notifications-on-zoom/
 
Joined
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Today's Trent Bosch was excellent. Good content and very well presented. His camera system for hollowing got a lot of oohs and aahs. I was disappointed with Mike Mahoney's presentation, though. The topic had a lot of potential -- the development of woodturning practices and tools over the past 35 years, but it didn't look like he put much work into preparation. He could have just thrown together some ideas in the half hour before he started.
 
Joined
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Today's Trent Bosch was excellent. Good content and very well presented. His camera system for hollowing got a lot of oohs and aahs. I was disappointed with Mike Mahoney's presentation, though. The topic had a lot of potential -- the development of woodturning practices and tools over the past 35 years, but it didn't look like he put much work into preparation. He could have just thrown together some ideas in the half hour before he started.
It is quite possible he did. Mike did say he lost a huge file and spent the whole night trying to put something together.
 
Joined
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Today's Trent Bosch was excellent. Good content and very well presented. His camera system for hollowing got a lot of oohs and aahs. I was disappointed with Mike Mahoney's presentation, though. The topic had a lot of potential -- the development of woodturning practices and tools over the past 35 years, but it didn't look like he put much work into preparation. He could have just thrown together some ideas in the half hour before he started.
What did Trent show. I missed it but will be watching when the recordings come out this week.
 
Joined
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I haven't had time to watch a lot of the symposium yet, but I did get a chance to see Glen Lucas and Trent Bosch. I thought both were outstanding and I learned some new things from each of them. Trent's hollowing rig looks like something I need I'm looking forward to catching up on some of the other presentations during the replay events.
 
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What did Trent show. I missed it but will be watching when the recordings come out this week.
Trent did a hollow form demo. Talked about good form and finish while shaping the exterior. Showed how to do hollowing by hand, then brought out his hollowing rig (sweet) and explained ans showed how to use, then showed the hollowing rig with the camera hooked-up. He was running short on time, but included about 10 embellishment techniques he uses on the vessels. I thought it was great, but I'm still learning about hollow forms.
 
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Chat: Just open chat as a separate window and park it almost entirely off the screen. Do that an you won't have to see any chat at all.

What I liked:

Trent's demo today was excellent. As it happened, he wound up demoing some items I was specifically interested in seeing, such as his carving stand. His approach to hollowing was easy to follow, easy to understand, and completely non-threatening. His camera set up and other aids were excellent. The only slight negative here was his voice being slightly muffled in his face shield.

The tips compendium was entertaining. I liked the quick-hit format. The wood-burning segment was far too long, though. I could see this being turned into more of a pro-style quick tips video series based on submissions along the lines of the long-running Fine Woodworking tips video series.

Though I hadn't intended to, I watched the panel critique. I'm not sure I really learned anything per se, but the panelists did spot details that I had missed, for good and bad. I did appreciate their perspective. I also liked the level of the critiques, i.e., very much focused on exactly the elements they said they would cover at the start and not launching into fine arts-style commentary.

The not-so-good:

Video wasn't great - considerably less than HD and frankly worse than most YouTube content these days.

Chat and Q&A were absolute disasters with no control, no moderation, and no clarity as the proper use of either. Moreover, the sequencing of Q&A submissions were out of sequence, questions were missed, and the content carried over from session to session.

The "Trade Show" isn't. I haven't checked out all the vendor Zoom sessions, but the ones I did I bailed on fairly early. And where are the discounts? I've found 3-4 and, in fact, ordered from Klingspor, but was surprised there aren't more ... including from the AAW itself. On the other hand, the level of sponsorship from a few vendors was nice to see - Powermatic even offering up a 3520c for the auction!

Given the previous comment about Mike Mahoney's prepared content being lost, I feel for him. This was a session I particularly anticipated, and it didn't go well. Audio and video problems, dropouts, Q&A confusion, rambling, and more. But Lord, what a shop!
 
Joined
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I felt sort of embarrassed for Mike Mahoney. He had some tech glitches and really didn't have much interesting info. It really could've been time spent much better than it was. I was also sort of disappointed in the critique. The selection of pieces for discussion was very odd and they seemed to struggle for things to say about them. I had really looked forward to both the Mahoney segment and the critique, but probably should've turned off the computer and gone for a motorcycle ride or over to my shop instead.

Trent Bosch did a great hollowing demo and Glenn Lucas did an outstanding job with his opening demo on the beaded bowl, as well as Rudy Lopez demo of his goblets. Honestly, I had thought the beaded bowl and the thin stem goblet were going to be my least favorites, but they have turned out to be my highlights so far.
 
Joined
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Chat Window - I can do without the attendee self introductions ("Hi! Jay Spavoda from No Trees, Texas") and the random banter between attendees. In my opinion, such just clogs up the chat window and adds nothing to the demonstration. Makes it difficult to find any nuggets of information. - John
 
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Hopefully that chat help above will cut that out as it is so irritating. Also what about that music, good grief. Everything as far as demos go was OK. The video is what it is right now because of the virus as the quality has been cut back by Zoom because of the heightened use of the internet because of said virus. I'm not a critique person and have never found that of any interest. Really looking forward to Cindy's demo as she is the best at this than anyone I have seen.
 
Joined
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I’ve watch three so far and Trents presentation IMO was the best of the three. Looking forward to Cindy’s later today. And like others have stated, I don’t like attendees using the sessions for personal chat room..
 
Joined
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I’m too busy to sit and watch video demonstations. It would be different if I could have gone to an in person symposium as I would have been there for a dedicated few days, but I am doing my job, taking care of responsibilities, and cannot pull myself away to sit in front of a computer screen ...hopefully they will be able to have a normal symposium next year, but with this corona virus we are in uncharted waters.
 
Joined
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As a green turner (me, not necessarily the wood) the demos have been the highlight. I particularly enjoyed Rudy’s.

The videography has been superb in showing the different ways the tools are presented to the piece. This along with the excellent explanations will be helpful to me.

Looking forward to Cindy this afternoon.
 

Dave Landers

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Video wasn't great - considerably less than HD and frankly worse than most YouTube content these days.

Even when it's not great, the video quality is at least as good as sitting in the back of a meeting room, 50' away from a monitor showing a view from a poorly positioned camera whose operator doesn't really know what the demonstrator wants you to see.


Zoom and other meeting platforms (webex, etc) are quite different than youtube and other streaming services (netflix, etc).
Zoom will generally prioritize live and interactive over video quality, and probably prioritize audio over video.
Youtube (netflix, etc) can buffer (delay) content to "ride out" connection issues. You don't really care if your movie is delayed by 15 seconds, but a 30 second delay (2x15 sec each way) in asking a question of a demonstrator and getting an answer (even if it's the moderator asking) would be quite irritating.

In my experience (as both a demonstrator and attendee of remote demos), the live/interactive part is important.

Maybe there's a better choice for a large demo like this, where it is by nature a bit less interactive. But "live demos" is probably not a big enough market to justify the hardware and software development for a specialized platform.
Also there really was not that much time to evaluate alot of alternatives.
IMO Zoom was a good choice as most remote demonstrators are already using it, and have significant investment in both the hardware/software and the practice controlling zoom cameras while talking about what they're doing while turning - it's some significant multitasking that doesn't come naturally.


If you're on a meeting and have poor video, but others say they're ok - one thing to try is disconnect and reconnect. Sometimes (not always) the problem is in which exact server in zoom's network you get connected to (and the path the internet takes to get you there). So re-connecting can sometimes get you a fresh "line" into zoom.
 
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Even when it's not great, the video quality is at least as good as sitting in the back of a meeting room, 50' away from a monitor showing a view from a poorly positioned camera whose operator doesn't really know what the demonstrator wants you to see.

Point very well taken. The gulf between that experience sitting in the prototypical back row versus say, Trent's incredible setup and skill using it is wide and deep!

On the theme of platforms, I do think Zoom is not the best choice for live-streaming. Even so, it is possible to use custom streaming services with Zoom, rather than screen sharing, which introduces its own issues, regardless of the incoming video/audio quality. Given that the demos weren't truly interactive in any meaningful way, a 20 second YouTube live stream buffer (using your example) would have been fine. And both the audio and video would have been better.

In the end, I didn't see a lot of value added versus pre-recorded demos. Anyone - if your opinion differs on this, please do point out what I'm missing. I'm looking forward to having access to the recorded versions, where hopefully the quality will be higher.
 
Joined
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Chat Window - I can do without the attendee self introductions ("Hi! Jay Spavoda from No Trees, Texas") and the random banter between attendees. In my opinion, such just clogs up the chat window and adds nothing to the demonstration. Makes it difficult to find any nuggets of information. - John

Chat window much better today. Not so much random banter among attendees. More focus on current demonstration. - John
 
Joined
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All of the turning demonstrators did well and had good shows that were valuable to watch, but l I have to give Cindy the crown. She clearly has been giving more of these live remote things and has spent a lot of time working out her videography.

As far as how the experience compares to a real symposium; it doesn't. It was very much like watching a you tube video, but without the pause and rewind ability.
 
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