This past June 24th, Kiwanis International announced their next worldwide service project at their 95th annual convention in Las Vegas. To help get the word out, we decided to stream the announcement of this monumental project live over the internet for the 243,000 Kiwanians who were not attending the convention.
My first thought was this would be a piece of cake. There’s 2-3 great live streaming products out there, I just need to choose one, create an account and then (bada bing bada boom) everything would be working just fine. This of course, wasn’t the case. As the project got underway, things got complicated and the final plan turned into something like this.The broadcast would:
- Be streamed on 4 channels simultaneously
- Incorporate 4 separate audio feeds (English, Mandarin, French, Spanish)
- Mix audio and natural sound from 3 Live Interpreters
- Switch on the fly between a live feed, 3 pre-recorded videos and a PPT presentation
- Require 2Gbps of upstream bandwidth (minimum)
- Involve 5 computers
- While managing re-distribution legalities from various content owners.
Before you go on, even if your project doesn’t require this much coordination and you are preparing for your first Live streaming event for professional purposes. I recommend you learn from my mistakes and adopt my checklist.
- Make sure you have enough upstream bandwidth.
- Make sure you have enough downstream bandwidth.
How are you going to make sure everything looks ok? Having a computer that’s set to view the stream is a good idea, but make sure you can view the stream without interrupting the broadcast if you’re on the same connection. - Will the video and audio be coming from different sources?
If so I make sure the audio is coming to you in broadcast ready form, it’ll be a headache to mix the audio with natural sound or other effects after you obtain it from the source. - Practice, Practice, Practice.
If you’ll be broadcasting from a venue that is new to you, make sure you are familiar with the surroundings and practice everything beforehand. - Decide exactly what software will you be using.
Even though you may have decided on one live broadcasting platform, many providers like Ustream, LiveStream, Justin.tv have a variety of broadcasting options. You can integrate with the stream via API, your web browser, a desktop application, or even other 3rd party apps. In my case I was planning on using Procaster from LiveStream.com, however the production company I worked with had experience using another app that integrated with LiveStream. It worked beautifully, but I wasn’t aware of the capabilities of the app until I arrived on-site. Know your software. - Do you want to record your stream? If so do you want to export it and post it elsewhere?
Make sure you know who owns the recording of your stream, (you or the streaming provider) and don’t assume you’ll be able to export a recording of your stream and upload it to YouTube. It’s not always that simple. Distributing your content may require using a widget. - How will you plan on getting people to watch your live stream?
Don’t assume just because people said they would watch it they will. I told my closest family members about my inaugural live stream broadcast, but guess how many of them watch the announcement? That’s right, a big fat 0. So, rather than rely on people’s well intentioned promises, I recommend you consider putting together a complete marketing plan to drive traffic to the broadcast.
I’m a fan of email and social media announcements. For this broadcast I relied upon 3 emails to drive traffic to my channels. They were sent 2 weeks out, 2 days out, and 5 minutes prior to the broadcast, respectively. Each email was sent to 15,000 recipients. As far as social media goes, I posted updates to 6 of our Kiwanis pages, with a combined following of 30,000 fans. These announcements drove 400 viewers to our channels. Not a great response, but due to the time sensitivity of such a conversion and the narrow audience appeal, I don’t think this is too bad.
If you have a moment, watch the recording of Kiwanis announcement and see how everything shaped up.
Chip McComb is a web strategist in Indianapolis, Indiana. He currently works at Kiwanis International helping to shape the social media and community development efforts for one of the top service organizations in the world.
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