This is an absolutely baffling comment. Particularly for a community (hackers) that value openness and transparency above pretty much all else. What in the world are you talking about, to a general public audience, that can't be heard by the rest of the world?
This is a highly politicized topic. Recording/streaming the event makes it very easy to take an out-of-context soundbite and turn it into a media story that actively hurts their ongoing efforts to improve the marketplace. They may want to keep the TV cameras out for the same reason they're not present in just about any kind of political discussion/negotiation; by the time anyone in government is speaking to media, the private discussions that crafted their story have already taken place. You really can't be candid when there are influential people looking to pick apart everything you say.
Recording/streaming the event makes it very easy to take an out-of-context soundbite...
I would have concluded the exact opposite. Making a full recording available allows any attempt to quote part the meeting out of context discoverable and provable. Without a recording, anyone that attends the meeting could jot down a quote that serves their purpose and report it without anyone being able to dispute the context (aside from relying on the memories of other attendees).
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Once a juicy soundbite makes the news rounds, a release of the full-recording isn't going to change anyone's mind.
YC talks aren't recorded, for similar reasons. When you know every word you say will be potential fodder for a sensationalist news story, it's harder to be blunt about what went right and wrong.
There's a difference between talks for invenstors/entrepreneurs, and talks about fixing a massive clusterfuck of government spending.
Especially when the narrative people want to spin is "Gee golly whiz look at those Silicon Valley folks saving the day!".
Anything else is CYOA, and it'd be nice if people could actually rise to the occasion and be honest and precise.
(Besides, if you are honest on everything, and somebody just hits you out of context, you can defend yourself by providing additional context. None of this is going to matter in 5 years anyways, so might as well set a good example.)
I don't think so. The people fixing the obamacare website most likely want obamacare to succeed, and are aware that there's a hungry media out there ready and waiting for the next story revealing just how awful the original website (and, they'll insinuate, hence obamacare itself) is.
I'm not sure a quote taken out of context actually is so easily corrected within the realm of American media and politics. Falsehoods are quoted and quickly reprinted, and the truth might not be so juicy as to get the same level of attention.
I can write down an out-of-context statement and report it with or without a recording. If anything, a recording is positive because you can contest what I claim you said with a hard-to-fake, in-context version of things.
Particularly for a community (hackers) that value openness and transparency above pretty much all else
Yeah, keep telling yourself that. The hacker community as a whole "values openness" when it suits them. 90% of the time, it's tribal Homo sapiens pattern matching the markers of their own tribe while imitating the outward appearance of the 10% that truly matters.
Valuing truth over your own ego is a majority stance and a minority capability around here.
These are fair points. Let me check with the other speakers and see what they're comfortable with. It's not my decision alone.
(As one of the other comments alluded to, we're engineers, not politicians, and we're certainly not equipped to deal with the media parsing our every sentence for soundbites.)
