Interviews Need Editing
Potential interest in every video segment. However, every interview needs editing-- video or audio-- because, without editing, it becomes a prisoner of its own format, laden with vague questions, obscure, hard to follow answers, and general tedium. With all due respect, the current video interview format rarely meets expectations.
A tighter delivery of information is accomplished with prerecorded video of text and graphics (where appropriate). Data professionals have learned to take in information at a much higher rate, and the exclusively text/graphics approach is likely to make the information flow "denser" or faster. As a prepared presentation, the information also can be more clearly focused and organized.
Another suggestion is to have the interviewer come from a background in the area under discussion. Unfocused questions like, "What are you fondest memories of the Black Hats of years past?" are innocently but agonizingly general, and serve only to open segments, as if trying to make conversation. DR should explore the utility of having veterans of the field as interviewers, with a general script to keep the line of questions integrated.
Potentially, of course, video interviews open something really fascinating, but we rarely find somebody with a good story just waiting to be interviewed, try as we might to prime interviewees with advance questions.
Let's face it-- in most situations, people have a tendency to make video resemble an exercise in filling a time slot. Truthfully, this is the first and last time I plan to watch a DR Black Hat video in the current format-- I simply don't have the time. In return for your having invested so much effort in production, not to mention actual interview time, you would serve your own cause by spendnig additional time editing the result.
You cannot afford to omit more intensive post-production, because only quality gathers an audience. Our time, like yours, is valuable-- please, make our investment even more engaging. That said, the UBM effort shows promise-- few other publishers take the trouble to cover these areas with such [potential) depth and detail.