The Cicero Project

A: Yes, the basic version of the software is free of charge for qualifying government institutions.

A: No. The baseline software product and its requisite updates will remain free for qualifying Cicero Project participants in perpetuity.

A: The baseline product, currently called “CourseCast” includes all the essential elements for meeting capture and training on demand. This includes:

• Video & screen capture, encoding and streaming
• Note taking (live and asynchronous)
• Word level search (notes, text on slides)
• Automatic podcasting, Windows media streaming
• Multi-browser playback support (IE, Firefox – PC, Mac)
• Web based editing

A: Participants can install as many server and client (recording) seats as they like and that can go across departments within each agency or municipality. What is not free are support services (phone support, training etc.) hosted versions of the software (see CourseCast Hosted) and advanced features and versions (document systems integration, multi-server management console, analytics, closed captioning). Please contact our sales group to discuss any specific questions you may have here.

A: Panopto’s software was originally designed and developed at Carnegie Mellon University and so part of the concept is to give back to the public sector in a similar manner we received benefit. We also expect the product to benefit from the participation of institutions in our various feedback programs, such as the beta and developer programs (previously announced).

A: As discussed above, Panopto offers a range of optional premium support and specialized value-added services, such as transcription and translation services and enterprise versions of the product line.

A: CourseCast is a fully-functional meeting and lecture capture system that can record, automatically index, stream and archive vast amounts of institutional content. It has been deployed successfully at many of the largest educational institutions including Carnegie Mellon, University of Pittsburgh, University of North Carolina, CalPoly and UPMC. The system gets high marks in terms of both its ease-of-deployment, portability and its embrace of industry standard pc hardware and software—thus lowering the total cost of ownership dramatically.

We are new to the government sector, but the constructs are roughly the same as academia – seamlessly capture and post video centric content on the web – securely and reliably. Over time, we will add other popular features such as voting systems integration and the like.

A: The Cicero Project is open to all city, state and federal governments and agencies. There are a handful of basic requirements aimed at ensuring the successful deployment of the technology, as well as the product’s continuing enhancement and development. In addition, we require that candidate institutions show a clear commitment to the use of lecture-capture technology, and a willingness to support the product.