Live Streaming: When to DIY or Not

Webcasting, live streaming, webinars, video-casting. No matter what you call it there are many ways to offer a live video stream to a worldwide audience and more opportunity and platforms than ever. The timeliness, reliability, and costs often dictate the form that live stream takes. When your message needs special care, reliability of the stream is key- say your public company’s quarterly earnings report, then it’s time to call in the professionals. After all, failure is not an option. In this case you want manned cameras that follow the speakers, professional lighting, professional audio, stage management, multi-camera direction and clean graphics that are “on brand.” Sound overwhelming? Don’t worry, we can help.

Now, let’s face it, not everything is make or break like a shareholder announcement where the very quality of the stream can influence stock price. Here’s an example we’ve seen often as travel budgets have shrunk; training material needs to be shared by 2 experts in different cities to an audience that is geographically dispersed. While some communications can be more endearing when they include natural human elements it’s essential to have the tech just right. Instead of flying both of those experts around on an informational tour, we recommend getting the experts in one place and broadcasting a live feed anywhere in the world- complete with live Q&A. This significantly reduces travel costs, plus you’ll be able to create a video after for those who missed it live. Sound overwhelming? Don’t worry, we can help.

Here’s another live stream example we’ve worked with often: the company announcement. For this example, imagine you’ve got a great new project, product or message to get out to your audience. Maybe you’ve got multiple audiences and multiple messages. You’ve already planned on getting a video crew there to capture some of the key messages from your “C” suite or maybe to shoot a demo of the awesome new widget your company makes… Maybe both. Either way, there’s a lot going on that day. It’s full of tight time tables, and schedule wrangling, and lots of people doing lots of different, but tightly organized tasks.

Whew!

As you look around the room/lecture hall/tradeshow floor/product demo area/business briefing center… wherever… you notice that there’s a lot of excitement and hullabaloo going on. You begin to wonder if that excited energy will be ‘captured’ in the video coverage after the edit is all done.

Your cell phone beeps and one of the key press people/audience members/customers let’s you know that they won’t be able to make it to the event, and they ask innocently. “Can I watch it online somewhere?”

Oh… whoops… you hadn’t planned on webcasting this but it dawns on you then that sharing this energy live streamed would be an awesome thing. It’d open the whole event up to an entirely new audience. An audience that would really feel the incredible excitement you felt right up until you got the text on your phone. That excitement is now anxiety filled with woulda, coulda, shoulda. Dang!

Now we’ll snap you out of the dream/nightmare for some good news, through a minimum of effort and new technology,  you can add a live stream to this event immediately. And don’t worry, we can still help by teaching you to help yourself.  Just ask.