|
| 1 | +--- |
| 2 | +layout: "@/layouts/global.astro" |
| 3 | +title: "Monte<video>: A Real Place" |
| 4 | +author: kixelated |
| 5 | +description: "Maybe join us in Uruguay this year? We'll be working on MoQ and stuff." |
| 6 | +cover: "/blog/monte-video/uruguay.png" |
| 7 | +date: 2025-11-11 |
| 8 | +--- |
| 9 | + |
| 10 | +# Monte\<video\>: A Real Place |
| 11 | +Who knew? |
| 12 | + |
| 13 | +No like seriously, they named a place after video encoding. |
| 14 | +And it's the capital of Uruguay??? |
| 15 | + |
| 16 | +## Summer Camp |
| 17 | +🎉 [kixelated/moq](https://github.com/kixelated/moq) was selected for the 2026 [Montevideo Tech Summer Camp](https://montevideotech.dev/summercamp2026/). 🎉 |
| 18 | + |
| 19 | +This means that Mike (Cloudflare) and I (painfully unemployed) will be mentoring MoQ newbies or whatever. |
| 20 | +It's a multi-month community effort to make some poor open source project (ours) a little bit better. |
| 21 | + |
| 22 | +And it all culminates in an IRL event in Montevideo at the end of January. |
| 23 | +**Fun fact**: it's summer there while it's winter (mostly) everywhere else. |
| 24 | + |
| 25 | +<figure> |
| 26 | +  |
| 27 | + <figcaption>AND they have an awesome thing on their flag.</figcaption> |
| 28 | +</figure> |
| 29 | + |
| 30 | +## Should you participate? |
| 31 | +So I actually went to Uruguay last year. |
| 32 | +[Mike's moq-js fork](https://github.com/video-dev/moq-js) was selected as a 2025 project and I thought it would be cool to help out in person. |
| 33 | + |
| 34 | +Yes it was super awkward contributing to a fork of my own project. |
| 35 | +Yes I'm just an awkward person in general. |
| 36 | +But it was still fun, I recommend it, and I'll be heading there again this year. |
| 37 | + |
| 38 | +If you want an excuse to work on MoQ or a business justification to visit Uruguay, this is your chance. |
| 39 | +The Qualabs folks legitimately provide a full-blown vacation with organized events, tours, meals, etc. |
| 40 | +You have to pay for flights+hotel... but that's about it. |
| 41 | + |
| 42 | +And you don't actually spend much time doing "work". |
| 43 | +The event is mostly about hanging out with other video nerds. |
| 44 | +The Whatapp Group from last year is somehow still active. |
| 45 | +You can *and should* bring your family\* or spouse or cat or whatever. |
| 46 | + |
| 47 | +\* Steve (aka da Heff) brought his two daughters and wife last year. |
| 48 | +They cackled like maniacs lighting the bonfire. |
| 49 | + |
| 50 | +## What are we working on? |
| 51 | +But before the event, we'll be working on MoQ. |
| 52 | +If you just want to submit pull requests and don't want to hang out IRL, that's totally fine. |
| 53 | +Approved, merged, and deployed straight to production. |
| 54 | + |
| 55 | +I'll be filing a boatload of issues in the next few days in a vain attempt at project planning. |
| 56 | +If you have any ideas or feature requests, file an issue or ping me on Discord. |
| 57 | + |
| 58 | +And to be clear, you don't need permission and can work on whatever you want. |
| 59 | +This event is more about bringing value to the community than serving any specific agenda. |
| 60 | + |
| 61 | +But if you're out of ideas, here's some free ones: |
| 62 | + |
| 63 | +### Conferencing |
| 64 | +Steal the rendering engine from [hang.live](/blog/first-app) and make a general purpose conferencing app. |
| 65 | +Without the copious amount of cringe and meme videos. |
| 66 | +Throw in some lame corporate branding and you've got a legitimate product..? |
| 67 | + |
| 68 | +### MoQ+HLS+DASH |
| 69 | +One of the biggest barriers to adoption is getting MoQ to work with an existing HLS/DASH stack. |
| 70 | +It turns out that it's not viable to instantaneously migrate all clients to MoQ. |
| 71 | +I've got some ideas on how to simultaneously support MoQ, HLS, and DASH with a unified MoQ relay. |
| 72 | + |
| 73 | +### OBS and Friends |
| 74 | +Another barrier to adoption is getting the media in the first place. |
| 75 | +I've got a crude gstreamer plugin already but it kind of sucks and needs a fresh coat of paint. |
| 76 | +Going further and getting OBS to work with MoQ would be a HUGE milestone. |
| 77 | + |
| 78 | +### POLISH |
| 79 | +We can also just polish the MoQ player and make it (more) ready for production. |
| 80 | +Stuff like better bundling, better documentation, better examples, etc. |
| 81 | +You know, the really boring stuff. |
| 82 | + |
| 83 | + |
| 84 | +## What next? |
| 85 | +The kick-off meeting is [this Friday](https://meetu.ps/e/PF7F0/GFW4z/i). |
| 86 | +That's in two days if you're reading this on the (exact) Wednesday that I'm writing this. |
| 87 | + |
| 88 | +It'll be a recurring thing until the end of January. |
| 89 | +I'm going to have to set an alarm for 3am to make the meeting (Australia) but sacrifice is part of my "job description". |
| 90 | + |
| 91 | +- If you're interested in the IRL event, [email to get on the guest list](mailto:summercamp@montevideotech.dev). |
| 92 | +- If you want to work on MoQ over the holidays, join the meetings to coordinate? |
| 93 | +- Otherwise, why are you still reading this? |
| 94 | + |
| 95 | +Or just hang out on [Discord](https://discord.gg/FCYF3p99mr). |
| 96 | +Direct social interaction is overrated. |
| 97 | +I'll make a `#montevideo` channel or something. |
| 98 | + |
| 99 | +## One Last Thing |
| 100 | +I want to thank JP, Nico, and the rest of [Qualabs](https://qualabs.com/) for being great hosts. |
| 101 | + |
| 102 | +It's fantastic that they sponsor this event. |
| 103 | +It's fantastic that they pay their employees to contribute to open source projects for a few months. |
| 104 | +It's even more fantastic that they throw parties for video nerds. |
| 105 | +They literally invite you to visit their home. |
| 106 | + |
| 107 | +I had a blast last year and (hopefully) I'll see you there this year. |
| 108 | + |
| 109 | +Written by [@kixelated](https://github.com/kixelated). |
| 110 | + |
| 111 | + |
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