Yes, they are finally ready!

These are links that point directly to the video files themselves. Right-click them and choose 'Save this link as...' to download to your computer (the wording may be slightly different depending on which browser you're using).

Update (05-13, 10:30pm US Central): Videos are also being made available on YouTube. If you just want to watch online, please go over to YouTube and save the bandwidth on our server for those downloading. Thanks to Strages for handling the YouTube-ing of the videos!

All files are at a small resolution of 320x180. This helps to keep the file size manageable for storage and downloads. I will be creating a set of DVDs at the original resolution of 720x480, and will make those available for anyone to download through BitTorrent and burn yourself... but that will have to wait a while because my job search needs more of my attention.

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Download these, copy these, re-upload them where you will, but please don't edit anything out without asking. And of course, it would be a bad idea to try to make money from them... the con guests or I would send lawyers who make gholams look genteel.

In chronological order:

(Downloadable videos offline, please see YouTube)

Opening Ceremony (00:48:19; 142mb)
Featuring that zany WOT-recap skit you've heard about!

An Hour with the Rigneys (01:02:42, 82.5mb)
Those who knew Jim Rigney (Robert Jordan) best share their memories.

Sword Forms workshop (01:18:01, 252mb)
How do those sword forms actually look (and how do new recruits look trying to learn them)?

Snakes & Foxes game demonstration (00:10:45, 31mb)
Olver's favorite game, Robert Jordan's practically-impossible rules - made real by fan Aubree Pham.

Brandon Sanderson's Writing Workshop, part 1 (00:59:09, 87.2mb)
Brandon Sanderson's Writing Workshop, part 2 (01:10:14, 87.1mb)
2 hours long, because we were in no hurry, and he IS that smart!

Team Jordan Panel (01:09:51, 160mb)
Harriet, Brandon, Wilson, Tom Doherty, and RJ assistants Maria Simmons and Alan Romanczuk talk about the beginning of writing the last Wheel of Time books.

Cairhienin Ball (02:51:31, 514mb)
Costumes, drawing for fan appearances in AMoL, and live entertainment from The Lost Boys and Big City Burlesque.

Meet Brandon Sanderson (01:05:40, 107mb)
Brandon answers fan questions.

Dancing Workshop (00:52:51, 236mb)
Demonstrations of real-world medieval and renaissance dances similar to what you might find in Emond's Field or a court ball in Andor.

Red Eagle Panel (00:50:01, 85.8mb)
Larry Mondragon of Red Eagle talks about plans for a Wheel of Time movie and games.

Feedback Panel (00:58:24, 113mb)
Convention wrap-up: what went right, what could've been better.

Please report by email any errors in the credits, or other problems you may notice, to roga, portalstones.com.

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That is all. I did not record any other events that can be published (particularly, I put all my equipment away during the AMoL reading as requested).

I will post up some description of experiences / interesting little things that happened that weekend in the next few days, but the best parts are easy to name:

Hearing the first scene from the AMoL prologue in Mr. Rigney's own words and voice was not just special as a fan. I found personal meaning in the experience that will not be easy to explain, but I will try later.

Meeting Harriet, Wilson and his family, who really are as unflaggingly kind to all of us crazy fans as they sound on the Dragonmount blog... and hearing their memories and stories that are peeks into their own lives as well as Mr. Rigney's. Standing around between some of the panels, and after hours, listening and grinning as Wilson talked will be some of my best memories of the con.

Meeting so many other fans, from every corner of the country and several corners of the world, under the same roof. It was like finding a legion of friends I did not know I had.

Anyone is welcome to comment and discuss here.

Very cool. I'll have to set some time aside to watch them.

Here is a little trivia... previously referenced here... but now you can see and hear it for yourself.

During the Team Jordan Panel (at 1:07:42 in the video), Brandon made a very brief reference to writing characters who had never had a viewpoint in WOT before. The next day in the Meet Brandon Sanderson panel (at 45:11 in the video), I asked more about this. We found out a few tidbits about the final 3 books from his answer. (I'm not typing it again... WAFO, and deal with my geeky voice )

In addition to that, he said at his signing on May 2nd in Lincoln, NE that there are 22 viewpoints in The Gathering Storm.

Roga, this is great and thank you for arranging this. Is there some place I could download this from an FTP site or the like? Routing it via the site seems to be problematic, as it will only play a few seconds at a time for me. Even downloading from the site is hard to do.

hey everyone.. great videos.. bad thing that downloading takes ages also watching is not near to fluent

so I am putting them on youtube atm

happy watching: http://www.youtube.com/user/WTFOG33

Thanks for taking the time to put these on YouTube, Strages. I figured someone would probably want to do that, but I couldn't get enthusiastic about it myself, because I thought if we just did that, people would be unhappy with the way YouTube resized everything.

But thanks to your help, there are two choices (with DVDs coming in the next few months). It will really help people get to see the con faster without maxing out our servers for months.

Roga is Awesome!

np almost uploaded all video's right now.. only problem i still have now is the carhienen ball.. i cant seem to get it downloaded :S

all videos are online right now. inclusively the carhienen ball got it downloaded plus uploaded

Okay, most likely no one cares anymore, but I started a writeup of my JordanCon experience, it has just been horribly delayed as I concentrated on getting the videos ready. I didn't start it for nothing, so here is the first part....

Arrival (Thursday)

After screwing up the last time I flew and arriving too late to board my original flight, I set out for the airport in Kansas City 3 hours early - there was no way I was going to mess up my own trip this time.

I had arranged to split a suite at the con hotel (the Alpharetta Embassy Suites) with 3 other people by poking around the forums on AgeOfLegends: Pam, Emma, and Ted. Emma turned out to be the head of the Nynaeve Fan Club; I had just found her site (which has some very nice fan art) while hunting through links to start a new WOT link collection. She texted the rest of us while I was waiting in Kansas City to let us know she had arrived and checked into the room.

The flight was a smooth two and a half hours. Firing up my phone on the ground in Atlanta, I learned that Pam had run into a delay but just landed at the same time. I told her to call me when she had gotten her bags, but when she hadn't called by the time I got mine, I went to the claim area for her airline and waited by the exit holding my battered copy of Lord of Chaos (reread!). This helped her to find me without needing to call again. =)

It took a few more hours to get to the hotel, thanks to the plodding imprecision of public transportation, but it wasn't too hard to find. We passed the time on the train by talking about where we were coming from and which fan sites we were familiar with. Emma welcomed us when we finally arrived, and I accepted the pullout bed in the front of the suite (gaidin among Aes Sedai must be flexible, after all).


Friday

The alarm on my phone woke me early because I had signed up to help the volunteers do setup. I lugged my stuff (laptop, cameras, tripod) downstairs and peered into a couple of rooms until I found someone standing around looking somewhat setup-ish. This was Tiffany Franklin, the gaishain wrangler (or head of volunteers). There didn't seem to be any setup that the con staff really needed help with, so I tried to stay out of the way as the very well-made flags were hung from the ceiling of the con rooms (these looked great, but hung low enough that they would become a camera obstacle all three days). I also staked out spots for the laptop/webcam and video camera.

After placing most of the hardware, I noticed Jason Denzel from Dragonmount passing through (no clue what he looked like before then, but people were talking to him). I introduced myself and asked if he'd be interested in linking the live video. He gave me an address to email, and the link was shortly posted in the Dragonmount Community forum.

Then I went to collect my badge and put in a couple of hours at the registration table by the front desk. This was really not much work either, because very few people were registering at this point. It was a bit of a break, as I gulped a quesadilla from the hotel restaurant and chatted with a fellow volunteer (who later intimidated the rest of the guests at the Cairhienin Ball with his great High Inquisitor costume, and is fun to talk to because his irreverent humor would suit Mat at some times, or a taunting Aiel at others).

A few minutes before 1pm, I scooted back to the main room to get my camera ready for the Opening Ceremony. My tripod had been commandeered by Hunter Wentworth, the RJ-documentarian. He thought it was Jason's, which he had been invited to use. That was quickly cleared up, and I mounted my own camera. The two of us were crammed between the front 2 rows and the wall, along with a cameraman from Tor. Hunter's camera battery ran out during the opening, and he didn't have a power cord available... I offered him a copy of my video, and although I didn't get his email address during the convention (I should have - he is a very nice guy), he is welcome to anything I recorded (in original format and resolution).

At this point Jason noticed me checking the webcam and gave me a quick intro to Pablo Defendini of Tor, who got our video feed embedded on the front page of Tor.com just before the opening ceremony started.

Despite my slightly obstructed view, the opening skit was very fun, with a lot of jokes mixed from WOT and real life. And now you can finally see it yourself (well, most of it - sorry about the other camera being in the way)! It was kind of obvious that Jason wrote the script himself - not only did he get to be Rand, he got to do it without paying the price of being stuffed in a box! How could he leave that part out? - Okay, so it would be hard to find a big enough box, but now they have a year to look.

To be continued...