Wow. I just received email #513 requesting either a transcript, tape or weblink from the conference Al Qaeda 2.0: Transnational Terrorism Since 9/11 which Peter Bergen, Karen Greenberg and I produced on Thursday for the New America Foundation and NYU Center on Law & Security.
I want to also thank the people who made this conference work behind the scenes because frequently great ideas and substance get strangled by logistics — and these folks prevented that from happening. Thanks to Jennifer Buntman, Jerry Irvine, Kartik Ramachandran, Joanna Lederman, Katie Willers, and Swati Pandey.
Here’s the scoop on transcripts, tapes, and weblinks.
1. You can watch the C-Span tape of the conference at your convenience over the internet by clicking here. You will see several listings, but scroll down to the ones noting the New America Foundation and NYU Center on Law & Security Al Qaeda conference. Part One is 1 hour and 50 minutes long, and part two is 7 hours and 45 minutes.
The C-Span tapes do not appear to be up for sale, as of yet.
2. The New America Foundation will be digitizing its own version of the conference, dividing panel by panel, and posting links on its site. The sound and production quality will not be anywhere as good as that of the C-Span recording, but we cannot digitize and offer C-Span’s tape. This will offer the opportunity to people to enjoy more bite size pieces of the conference. This will probably be up by Tuesday or Wednesday of this next week.
3. New America Foundation will also produce video tapes which are copies made of our tape from the conference. We can probably copy these for those who most want or need them — but given that the entire conference ran for nearly 10 hours, we need to figure out the number of tapes needed for this to work. There will also be some cost involved for those who request them. When that is determined, I will post the amount and contact person here on the web for those interested.
4. Although I generally don’t like to produce transcripts of events because they are rarely read, we are going to produce transcripts for this event. It will take at least a week and probably two weeks to produce a full transcript of this conference. I am trying to find a way to make it faster, but that is what the length of probable time is as I look at it right now. What will be produced is only a rough cut at the transcript, rather than an edited version. This will be made available to journalists and others who request it, but it will not be posted on New America’s site or the website of the NYU Center on Law & Security.
5. Edited transcripts will be available to the public at some point. We will most likely have a web-based version that is downloadable and a print version that can be made available at some reasonable fee to cover the cost of production and mailing. The NYU Center on Law & Security is going to take the lead on editing this set of presentations, and we are in discussions about the possibility of producing a book — but that will be a much longer term venture.
So, this is what the distribution of conference content will look like. I’ll keep you posted as I learn more.
— Steve Clemons
