Online video, online video publishing, streaming media, OVP, OTT, web television, video advertising, marketing, startups, gadgets, social media, videoconferencing, collaboration and related topics are discussed here. Thanks for stopping by the "Klessblog."
This infographicby Mediaplatform, an enterprise video platform, looks at the explosive growth in the use of video in the enterprise over the last decade. It started with voice-only teleconferencing, which naturally evolved into videoconferencing. Then, the need to extend to desktops evolved into web conferencing, webcasts, online collaboration, virtual event delivery and telepresense. It grew out of necessity to expand beyond videoconferencing rooms and conference centers to reach all desktops and mobile devices, as well providing richer metrics on audience engagement.
The need to be connected everywhere, all the time, with access to information and your online contacts is still a new phenomenon within the backdrop of the analog age. We used to use a variety of physical media, such as, audio cassettes, VHS tapes, 35mm slides, and conduct all training and in-person. Production costs were high, satellite transmissions were expensive and editing was all done on film or tape. CD-ROMs and DVDs made things easier for a short time, with the ability to better organize our content into chapters. But as the Mediaplatform infographic shows, the Internet changed everything and gave us the ability to use video for live and archived productions and events at a fraction of the cost of analog video, powered by an industry of enterprise video platforms.
"By contrast, tools such as on-demand webcasting and online video portals now allow trainees to view video content from their own laptop, desktop, or even mobile devices. Employees can now collaborate on projects from remote locations with much greater ease and efficiency through the use of video conferencing and webcasting tools. With this all in mind, we thought it would be a fun exercise to develop an infographic highlighting the evolution of business video in the enterprise."
Today, the integration real-time of business communication services with non-real-time messaging services make up the unified communications suite. But what's next for the enterprise? This article on the, One Market Media Blog - Google Glass, Lifecasting and the Future of Business Video, explores how augmented reality and wearable devices like Google Glass and Apple's iWatch will have a dramatic effect on business video and customer experiences.
Last month I had the pleasure of participating on a panel session: Webcasting Tips and Tricks From the Enterprise, at Streaming Media West. The panel was comprised of several enterprise video industry veterans from Wells Fargo, Cadence, Oracle, Lockhead Martin and myself, from Kaiser Permanente. While I'd usually say that I'm pleased to share the video from the session, I have to say that I may enter it in The Sucky Video Awards. I say this because from my personal experience, the videographer forgot one of the cardinal rules in video – have good lighting. In this video, it looks like only one light was used to cover the four presenters and moderator and you can barely see me in the dark corner of the stage. I would have used at least two lights in this situation, and also move the podium to one side so that all the presenters were in a row and well lit. Beyond that – I present this video not only for the great content each presenter shared, which is very valuable webcasting tips and tricks from the enterprise, but also as an all important tip – invest in good lighting or your video will suck.
Streaming Media West 2011, Session C201: Webcasting Tips and Tricks From the Enterprise
This session focuses on best practices from enterprise corporations which have adopted and implemented live video across their organization. See firsthand how these companies are using video for internal and external communications and learn how you can better leverage assets already available inside your company. Hear firsthand from those who have been successful with their deployments and learn what advice they have for others deploying live video in the enterprise today.
Moderator: Patty Perkins, Team Leader, Wells Fargo Creative Services Technology, Wells Fargo
Speaker: Michael Chop, Senior IT Architect, Cadence
Speaker: Tony Sehgal, Sr. Manager, Digital Media Operations and Infrastructure, Oracle
Speaker: Eric Hards, Manager, Web, Media Graphics and Streaming, Lockheed Martin
Speaker: Larry Kless, Production Manager, Videoconferencing and Virtual Events, Kaiser Permanente
We started our discussion talking about the partnerships that we've developed within our organizations and how we use all the assets available us to make webcasting work.
Eric Hands shared how at Lockhead Martin, they just completed a architecture design working with each of our individual business units. Each unit currently has its own streaming system. Some from one vendor some from another. It has always been his goal to provide a unified architecture and they are getting close with these new accepted requirements. But it has a long way to go.
Mike Chop's elevator pitch is "To have a strategy around any audio/video that touches our
network". At Cadence, they are pretty strong on the webcasting, telepresence, unified communications, Microsoft Lync and trying to add mobile to the mix. They started building a pretty strong creative production group. Here is a link to their latest podcast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GOPPf_9Vr8
Tony Sehgal discussed how at Oracle, they deliver live streams to both external and internal audiences using two different networks and media platforms. His responsibilities focus on live events, but he works with their broader team on hosting on demand media for Oracle's external audience. They do all their streaming in Flash, both internally and externally, and were one of the first organizations to stream with Flash multicast over their LAN. He's able to get metrics data for live events from Akamai and from MediaPlatform's Webcaster product. They also have a metrics team that implements SiteCatalyst to capture the official metrics data for our team. The SiteCatalyst plugin has been implemented on all of our live event platforms.
My work at Kaiser Permanente is focused on virtual events delivery, through videoconferencing, WebEx and webcasts and the full content life cycle. I partner closely with a colleague in our IT organization who heads up our WebEx rollout and over the last few years we've developed a Virtual Events Delivery Team. Prior to WebEx, we used our videoconferencing network as our internal broadcast network but since we've standardized on WebEx as our web conferencing platform we've been able to get to people's desktops, where they've been asking us to reach them for years. We work with internal business units on enterprise all hands meetings, town halls, educational sessions and since we're a health care organization we've even done live broadcasts from the OR (operating room). We currently don't have an internal video streaming we outsource large webcast events. On demand video is mainly delivered from web servers a progressive downloads and or from internal social media platform that is powered by Jive Software.
An interesting topic we discussed was a question Mike Chop asked about: What are “good metrics” for “stickiness”, his term for improving attention span. At Kaiser Permanente, we use Webex as one of our enterprise webcast platform, and a great tool within Webex, is the attentiveness meter that can tell if people are multi-tasking or paying attention. We've found that we can achieve 75% attentiveness with live video and real-time chat which helps keep the virtual attendees highly engaged. On demand video is not at all as engaging as live video, and having a community manager to respond to chat questions and add color helps keep people tuned in.
Nick Balletta has been in the live webcasting business for a long time, and as CEO of Talkpoint, his company has helped shape the online video industry by providing clients, the technology and services to build scalable video communications. Talkpoint's predecessor – NextVenue – pioneered the live interactive webcasts since 1998, and its roots that go back to CNBC/Dow Jones desktop video. Talkpoint operates as a SaaS based model with overlay production services for large, live, interactive and secure video and audio webcasts. It facilitates more than 20,000 live webcasting events per year for the top Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies.
I caught up with Balletta earlier this year via Skype to talk about the latest enterprise video trends. He shared the latest real world data his company had collected over the last two years, that showed a significant growth in both the adoption and expansion of video within enterprise communications. I first spoke with Balletta last year at Streaming Media East, where he told me that webcasting for enterprise communications may finally be reaching a tipping point.
Publishers are incorporating video
One trend Talkpoint sees is that publishers are incorporating video into their business communications. Historically, webinars are done in the publishing sector for lead generation and sponsorship revenues, with presenters spread out over a wide geographic area. Typically, the webinars have been audio only events, however over the past year Talkpoint has seen publishers intergrate video ad insertion, video roll ins and full video webinars. Balletta noted that the growth in this are has been significant and they see this trend growing year over year as people start to leverage video chat technologies.
Year over Year Comparisons (YE2010)
• Video Ad Insertion
• 9% increasing to 22%
• Video Roll Ins
• 12% increasing to 27%
• Full Video Webinars
• 5% increasing to 11%
Video is being integrated with other technologies
Another trend is companies that are not in the video business are moving into the video business. In the financial markets, video is being integrated with other technologies. Broadridge, a leading provider of investor communications helps thousands of public companies and mutual funds worldwide communicate and conduct business with shareholders, created Virtual Shareholder Meetings. Balletta says it's not the traditional shareholder webcast they call "spray and pray" where you broadcast everywhere and hope people show up, but it's actually a full blown system that authenticates individual shareholders, allows them entry into the webcast and lets them submit their votes in real-time. This system supports their physical meeting and is a $400-500 million market for Broadridge.
Virtual Shareholder Meetings
• Share holder authentication with video webcasting
• LiveOnlineProxyVoting
• Intel, Dell, BestBuy
• Moving towards online video meetings only
Video Webcast Viewer trends Talkpoint supports some 15,000 annual webcasts and it's data shows that the number viewers is growing along with the number of individual webcasts. Talkpoint's system can scale up to 15,000-20,000 simultaneous users, and while most companies don't need to reach that scale they consider anything over 1,000 simultaneous users as meaningful in size.
Year over Year Comparisons (YE2010)
• Video Webcasts with over 1000 Viewers
• 23% Increase
• Video Webcasts with over 5000 Viewers
• 17% Increase
• Video Webcasts with less than 250 Viewers
• 27% Increase
So, what's driving the growth? Balletta pointed to several key factors, in particular – media players are now built into operating systems, broadband is pervasive, computers are faster and people are comfortable watching video on their computers, and overall, watching video online has gotten much easier to do than in the early days.
Video Signal Acquisition Until recently, webcasts were generally hosted from a studio where encoding was done on site or the video was sent to the webcast encoding company through a satellite uplink. Now, Balletta says, people are using every video resource as a broadcast production point for a live webcast and Talkpoint leverages them all. The biggest shift is that the need for satellite trucks is going away as IP video adoption and QoS (Quality of Service) increases within the enterprise.
Year over year comparison (YE 2010) • Broadcast Studios (corporate and professional)
• 5% Increase
• Satellite Truck
• 8 % Decrease
• VCU / TelePresence
• 28% Increase
• 78% IP vs ISDN
• Onsite Encode
• 34% Increase
Corporate Enterprise environment
Balletta notes that Talkpoint operates in the corporate enterprise where they have to support multiple browsers. While Microsoft is on IE 9, IE 6 still pervasive in the enterprise. Bandwidth is always a concern in the real world, says Balletta, and while HD video quality is great it's not going to make it through a corporate firewalls and proxy servers. So what they see from a video encoding perspective is video bit rate
speeds of 150Kbps–500Kbps. Balletta says the important thing is that
people have to be able to consume the video and most corporate
environments don't support 2Mbps streams.
"At the end of the day, we're in a mission critical, actionable, information environment where the messaging is more important than necessarily the pixelation on the video. People are watching video on their computers, so although HD video and HD cameras are great, in the enterprise, it doesn't really bode well."
• Year over year comparison (YE 2010)
• 300 Kbs increase of 23%
• 400Kbs increase of 27%
• 500Kbs in crease of 12%
Anecdotes from TalkPoint
• Self Service Video webcasting increasing (all you need is a browser)
• Automation (Saas)
• Flexible Signal Acquisition
• Ease of use
• Flash viewership is on the rise
• Live streaming
• Not just progressive downloads
• IT staffs adding support (Proxy servers, firewalls)
• The battle for video standards creates opportunity
• Adobe, Apple, Microsoft
• Enterprise users don’t care about HTML5....yet
• Even with video webcasting on the rise audio webcasting is here to stay
Balletta says that Talkpoint's focus continues to be on automation and scalability, as it's moved to a SaaS model and the company is seeing a 30% year over year growth in its business.
Q&A with Nick Balletta
How do you see social media integrating with enterprise webcasting? What are companies doing?
"We have an actual social media strategy from Talkpoint proper, in terms of we got our blog, Facebook, Twitter account and our whole marketing team that manages our presence on the Internet. But from a webcasting perspective, I'm of two minds. Webcasting exists as a business because it's not social, it's really serious, and we work in an environment where people are paying to distribute content, and it's typically actionable, mission critical information. They're communicating to their constituencies, their shareholders, their business partners, their clients, so they're trying to maintain a single message to all of the different media that are available out there.
Webcasting being one of them, and when you put a social media aspect into a webcast – where you have viewers potentially rearranging the desktop to move branding around, or chatting with each other or maybe commenting on the event and tweeting – that is counter intuitive to the singular message, and we think that social media webcasting is not going to be something that's going to be a growth business. Now, we're smart enough to keep an eye on it and make sure we've got technology and tools to support it. But most of our customers are very concerned about the DNA of their company, which is their brand, and they're very concerned about maintaining that singular message.
And it's so funny, I always hear people in large enterprises talking about recruiting young technology talent folks who know how to use those social media technologies, Twitter and Facebook, and the minute they get on board, they prohibit them from using it. So, I always say all the digital agencies are having a bonanza because they're making money consulting people to use social media at the enterprise level, when most executives in the enterprise are thinking, I have to do it because everybody else is doing it. They don't really know how to define success, what the metrics are for tracking success to be in social media. So right now all the agencies are making money. In a couple of years it's going be the lawyers.
And I've said this on a couple of panels and people have scratched their heads, but what happens when an employee crosses that imaginary line and says something they shouldn't say on the company Twitter feed or the company Facebook page? Or their personal Facebook page? When does the edginess become a liability? I call myself Nicktrodomus, and say, in the future we're going to have a problem with this. The much younger people at Talkpoint think I'm wrong, but I think I'm right.
One time I wrote an article for Streaming Media magazine and said, 'social media is for your teenage daughter not for serious grown ups who want to webcast', and they made me edit it out, so I'm sneaking it back in."
About Nick Balletta
Nick is CEO of TalkPoint, an industry leader in global communications technology. With more than 25 years of experience in media and technology, he is a pioneer in the field of unified communications and interactive webcasting. Nick launched his first company – Voyager Data Networks – in 1996 and sold it two years later, at which time he had the foresight to invest in the burgeoning field of streaming media.
In 1998, he founded TalkPoint's predecessor -- NextVenue -- as an offshoot of CNBC/Dow Jones Desktop Video, a joint venture among Microsoft, NBC and Dow Jones. Here he led its global expansion and merger into streaming media company iBeam Broadcasting. At iBeam, he served as president of enterprise services and was a member of the board
before buying back the company, now known as TalkPoint, in 2003.
Nick holds an MBA from Rutgers Graduate School of Management and regularly competes in triathlons across the country. About Talkpoint
TalkPoint is an industry leader in global communications technology, specializing in browser-based audio and video webcasting. Since 1998, TalkPoint's easy-to-use, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) cloud platform has facilitated more than 20,000 live webcasting events per year for the top Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies. From investor relations and corporate communications to product launches and continuing education, TalkPoint offers scalable and flexible technology to meet today's business communication needs. For more information, visit www.talkpoint.com.
I'll be taking a short break from my intense work schedule next week to speak at Streaming Media West, on a panel session, Webcasting Tips and Tricks From the Enterprise. According to the conference program, "this session focuses on best practices from enterprise corporations which have adopted and implemented live video across their organization. See firsthand how these companies are using video for internal and external communications and learn how you can better leverage assets already available inside your company. Hear firsthand from those who have been successful with their deployments and learn what advice they have for others deploying live video in the enterprise today."
Streaming Media West returns to Los Angeles and the conference organizers promise it to be even best show yet. Last year more than 2,500 content owners, viral video creators, online marketers, enterprise corporations, broadcast professionals, ad agencies, educators, and others all come to Streaming Media West to see and hear more than 100 speakers and 30 sessions focused on latest online video technology and the business models that are coming of age. In conjunction with the show is the first ever HTML5 Video Summit, which is an expanded two-day summit with how-to sessions, demos, case studies, round table discussions and more.
Here's a short promotional video about the conference which kicks off this Monday with pre-conference workshops and the show is November 8-9, 2011.
My session is scheduled on Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 10:30 am and confirmed participants include:
Moderator: Patty Perkins, Team Leader, Wells Fargo Creative Services Technology, Wells Fargo
Speaker: Michael Chop, Senior IT Architect, Cadence
Speaker: Tony Sehgal, Sr. Manager, Digital Media Operations and Infrastructure, Oracle
Speaker: Eric Hards, Manager, Web, Media Graphics and Streaming, Lockheed Martin
Speaker: Larry Kless, Production Manager, Videoconferencing and Virtual Events, Kaiser Permanente
Here are some "best practices" that I shared in that post, that address the technical and logistical challenges for webcasting, and how you put the right team and the right technology in place.
If you are producing a webcast, consider the following:
Know your role. You may be producer, director and technical director and even camera all rolled up into one. Or you may have the luxury of hiring a full crew.
Get clients on board with deadlines, financial commitments and better understanding of web cast requirements.
Audio is the number one killer. It’s an ongoing issue when using wireless microphones, telephone call ins, multi-point conferencing and live PA (Public Address) system.
Working with a team you know and trust and who knows your business is best. Relationships are vital to your process. Delegation and deference to expertise key to getting the job done. You need to rely on your team to do their job and sometimes take over your chores too when you get called away to manage client issues and handle last minute changes.
Redundant personnel and technology is a must and equipment failure should be expected. Back up to you back ups really saves the day in a pinch.
Make every room a broadcast studio.
Site surveys at least a good 8 weeks ahead to inspect data and A/V ports, power requirements for lighting, ceiling height for rigging, windows and doors for light and noise, bring a digital camera, measuring tape and a continuity tester as part of your arsenal.
Complete all pre-web cast equipment and connectivity testing well in advance and conduct it on-site for higher reliability.
Prepare a production summary that includes every last bit of detail that covers the entire production. Give everyone on the crew a copy for reference and lead a production meeting before the works so that all teams are synched up.
Be prepared for last minute changes and if there’s time just roll with them – update your script, rehearse if possible, but say “No, we’re out of time” when you have to. Really, there’s nothing worse than a major on-air blunder. But as they, “It’s live television.”
Also, be sure to have back up equipment and crew in case of technical or physical problems, and don't forget to test your webcast on location. I'll share more tips following my session next week.
I caught up with Peter Himmelman, independent singer/songwriter, at the Online Video Platform Summit following his panel discussion "How to Choose an Online Video Platform for Your Business", to talk about how video has helped extend his reach and engagement with his worldwide fan base. While Himmelman is not a familiar name to most, he's cultivated a long career as an imaginative rock musician, children's entertainer, TV and film composer, Emmy and Grammy nominee and for the past two year, the star of his own weekly webcast show, Peter Himmelman’s Furious World.
Himmelman is also Bob Dylan's son-in-law, being married to his daughter Maria Dylan, who he counts as one of his many influences. Himmelman is known for his conviction as an independent artist and for his unpredictable performance style (as evidence of this impromptu video interview). Most notably, as an observant Jew he does not perform on Fridays, and turned down an invitation to perform on the "Tonight Show" because it fell on Shabbat.
He broadcasts his musical web variety show, Peter Himmelman’s Furious World, from his Santa Monica, California studio every Tuesday at 7:00 pm PST on Ustream.tv using the Newtek TriCaster. The show features live music and spoken bits by the Himmelman and his cast of regulars, off-the-wall videos, and guest performers. Himmelman says that the portability of streaming production is a key in getting his artistic message out, in lieu of a demanding touring schedule.
As a music recording artist he says that hosting his webcast on Ustream's highly trafficked website has helped increase his visibility and brought him closer to his fans. He's using video because he says that, "the music industry as we had known it is pretty much done, the death knell has sounded," and he decided to try online video as a new and different way to put his product out there.
"It was just a fluke. This guy that works for me, Mark Jacobs, he said, “Hey, there’s this thing where you can broadcast live.” So we set up this camera and thought, “Wow, this really looks good.”
It hasn’t lived up to where I want it to be right now. It’s not paying for itself, which is a huge problem, and I don’t know if it ever will or not. It’s a really great thing, it’s a cool idea, but without any money coming in — and I’ve done it for two years — I have to constantly say to myself, “What it’s for?”
But I always get letters and a lot of encouragement. Yesterday I met with a guy who was trying to help me with the show and he said (he’s from Israel), “Look, you have to remember what the president of General Electric said: Either fix it, sell it or close it. This is what I’m trying to help you with. Either we’ll fix it, or sell it or we shut it down.”"
It's been more than a decade since the Victoria’s Secret online fashion show became the first major webcast event with a record-breaking 1.5 million visitors worldwide. In 1999, an event of that proportion could not scale to support the audience size and necessary bandwidth requirements to provide a quality viewing experience on such a large scale. Nick Balletta, CEO of TalkPoint Communications remembers that webcast, and says that back then webcasting was more of a novelty with a poor end user experience. But today, webcasting for enterprise communications may finally be reaching a tipping point.
At Streaming Media East 2010, I spoke with Balletta about how his company powers enterprise communications with its webcasting and virtual meeting platform. New York-based TalkPoint Communications has been around since before 2000, and provides a browser-based Software as Services model (SaaS) for online meeting and presentations. The company is very active in the enterprise space with a global base of Fortune 1000 customers in the health care, pharmaceutical, life sciences, financial, technology and publishing markets. The original company was founded in 1997 as a joint project of Dow Jones Interactive and Microsoft desktop video and was previously known as NextVenue and later iBEAM. In 2001, iBeam launched TalkPoint as a web-based, self-publishing presentation product, the company later went private under the name TalkPoint.
Balletta says that Talkpoint's clients are most interested in using their large-scale global webcasting services, which incorporate audio, video, slides, and other interactive elements. These virtual events can be delivered as either an audio or video webcast, or webinar events for internal and external communications. Security and interactivity are important for Talkpoint customers, which Balletta maintains is Talkpoint's sweet spot.
Balletta summed up the value of webcasting for enterprise communications:
"We see webcasting more as a business tool, it's a workflow tool. Years ago it was something nice to do, now it's become a critical part of people's businesses – and now it's either driving revenues, supporting their brand, communicating with their different constituencies, whether they be shareholders, clients, employees – so it's clearly a business tool that's here to stay. We also see a trend to much more adoption of video – both at making it easier to view and easier to present. So we think video is something that's clearly going to be here for a long time."
About TalkPoint
TalkPoint provides Web-based audio and video Webcasting solutions that enable companies and organizations to communicate more effectively. TalkPoint's easy-to-use applications incorporate audio, video, slides, and other interactive elements to deliver high-impact presentations cost effectively. TalkPoint offers both self-service and full-service solutions.
For more information on TalkPoint, go to http://www.talkpointcommunications.com/
My friend Kevin Shively just published a piece on Streamingmedia.com titled, Lessons Learned From Live Events, and as CTO of TV Worldwide the leading provider of online Internet video delivery solutions since 1999, Kevin is a veteran of live internet broadcasting. He and his team at TV Worldwide have worked independently and in collaboration in the broadcast video production arena for the past 20 years and have been pioneers in streaming media on the Internet since the technology’s inception in the mid 90’s. In October 2008, TV Worldwide announced that it was expanding its existing facility near Washington D.C. to create the largest Internet TV Studio in the U.S.
Kevin says, "It’s hard to believe, but 2009 marks the 10th anniversary of TV Worldwide. Over the past decade, we’ve webcasted more than 5,000 live and archived events and, by necessity, become quite experienced at producing live webcasts—so much so that many of our clients know us primarily as a live-webcast service provider. This experience has taught us many things about what and, perhaps more importantly, what not to do."
I've done my share of live videoconferences, webcasts and webinars for numerous corporate clients over the years, and while webcasting is a different animal than videoconferencing, a lot of the same rules apply. With any successful event you have to plan it all out and expect that something could wrong. So testing, rehearsals and back up contingency planning often saves the day.
In his article, Kevin shares the following "lessons learned" which should be helpful to anyone producing a live event. Read the full article here.
1. Have a Reason to Go Live - Here are two main conditions that, if either is met, are solid reasons for webcasting live: if the event is interactive and participatory on the part of the viewers and if the content is time-sensitive.
2. Don’t Blow Out the Bitrate (or Screen Size) - Streaming anywhere from 200Kbps to 300Kbps works just fine.
3. Test, Test, and Test Again - Any live production is, by definition, a one-shot deal. Either it goes right or it doesn’t. The only way to ensure that it goes smoothly is to test and plan using the exact conditions as the live event
4. Choosing Your Format - While there is certainly some debate about which format is the best for live webcasting, the most important factor to consider is the audience that will receive it. Using Flash video is one way to avoid the Windows/Mac compatibility issue 5. Providing Interactivity - Perhaps the most powerful reason to deliver a live webcast is the ability to enable interactive participation for viewers. There are many ways to do this, from polling and online-form responses to chat-based and email-based question-and-answer opportunities. The best rule of thumb is the tried and true acronym KISS: Keep it simple, stupid.
This is a Qik video I shot of a behind scenes look at TV Worldwide's live streaming set up with Kevin Shively and team with a cameo by Jose Castillo. Kevin was streaming the Keynote by Albert Cheng from Streaming Media West 2008 Day Two.
Here are a few related Klessblog posts on the subject:
About Kevin Shively As Executive Vice President of Business Development Kevin Shively is responsible for creating and maintaining new revenue channels for TV Worldwide, including sponsorship sales for the many live and archived event webcasts TV Worldwide produces each year and the creation of new Internet TV channels. Formerly, Kevin ran East Coast advertising sales for Net Radio Sales, a company that represents over 400 Internet radio stations reaching millions of listeners each month and brought numerous Fortune 500 advertisers to Internet radio. Prior to Net Radio Sales, Kevin served as Vice President of Internet radio station Beethoven.com and positioned that company as a leader in the webcasting industry by negotiating deals with the Coollink Broadcasting Network and Jones' Media America making Beethoven.com one of the first stations on the Internet to successfully employ a targeted ad insertion solution. During his tenure, Beethoven.com was consistently rated among the top 10 most listened-to stations rated by the Arbitron Measurecast Ratings.
About TV Worldwide
Founded in 1999, TV Worldwide developed the first Internet TV network of community-based Internet TV channels, primarily targeting niche professional communities ranging from the Maritime industry to the Digital Media sector. Known by many in the industry as “Internet TV for Smart People”, Fortune 500 companies, 15 federal government agencies, and numerous International associations including the National Association of Broadcasters, utilize TV Worldwide's live and archived state-of-the art video streaming content applications and Internet TV channels. In recognition of the company's unique achievements in new media, TV Worldwide was selected by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) to webcast the Daytime Emmy Awards in 2007 and the 59th Annual Emmy awards for Technology and Engineering in 2008. CEO Dave Gardy has been honored by Streaming Media Magazine as one of the 25 Most Influential People in Streaming Media. Mr. Gardy also currently serves as the President of the International Webcasting Association (IWA) (www.webcasters.org).
Many blogs have already reported the news the Yahoo Live! is discontinuing its live streaming platform next month. It's 9 month experiment comes to a close on December 3rd. It was started Yahoo's Advanced Project team Yahoo! Brickhouse and was intended “a platform for live video” to allow anyone with a webcam to set up their own channel and stream live video. It joined a crowded field of companies like Stickam, Justin.tv, Ustream, Qik, Mogulus and Flixwagon who were already in the same space.
According to the Yahoo Live blog Yahoo software engineer Keith Thornill, "Our mission here on the Brickhouse team is to quickly develop product ideas that can add value to Yahoo! as a whole. To do this effectively we constantly evaluate our early-stage products and sometimes have to make the hard decision to move on, in order to continue exploring new territory and developing new products. So it is with great sadness that I share the news that Yahoo! Live, a Brickhouse project in social broadcasting will be going off the air on 3 December 2008."
Chris Albretch of NewTeevee offered these thoughts, "Is this a harbinger of things to come in the live-streaming space? Probably not. The whole project was an experiment for Yahoo, which, let’s face it has much bigger issues to deal with right now. While the sector as a whole certainly has struggled to find a viable business model, the startups populating it have managed to hang on (for now) and move beyond videos of people eating breakfast."
Although Yahoo Live! was an ambitious effort it didn't seem to have a clear business plan and it's not clear if Yahoo's current financial situation was a reason to axe the service. I actually tuned in this evening at 10:00 PM PDT and there were only 831 people watching 37 channels.
However, Ben Homer of Online Video Watch offers this perspective, "On a day where the Premier League lashed out at Justin.tv for their lax policies on taking down illegal content, it’s worth asking if Yahoo!, a company with real revenue and existing video delivery scale can’t afford to pay for bandwith, how much longer can some of the other players in live streaming space survive. How will they make money?
The answer is subscription sales, or ad sales, or both, but the former requires a rabid audience, the latter requires more targeted advertising, and both require scale and low content delivery costs to be successful."
The Yahoo blog concluded, "We hope you can join us in our town hall this Wednesday to toast Yahoo! Live.
For more out of Brickhouse, check out the recently launched fire eagle, and keep an eye on next* to stay posted on what we’re doing next."
This is an interesting session from Streaming Media West that was led by Mike Newman, CEO of Accordent Technologies which focused on the enterprise streaming environment. I've been in the corporate video sector myself for the last 18 years and I'm challenged every day on how to provide streaming services in a large corporation that has no centralized enterprise streaming service. Many companies have numerous divergent ad hoc solutions that are either bought or built through partnerships with external service providers or internal skunkworks projects.
With the constant need for cost-cutting measures organizations have looked to network based conferencing and e-learning solutions to stretch their budget dollars. But in most corporations physical media is still widely consumed in the form of DVD and CD media but it will eventually follow the course of VHS and become obsolete as next generation networks become more capable of handling the video bandwidth. Also clients will see the value of reporting metrics that are available from online solutions along with better version control.
There are a variety of live and on-demand suites available in hardware and software as service models and that industry continues to evolve. While there's always a need for face to face communication in many situations it's clear that streaming media will play more of a key role within the enterprise.
Best Practices in Enterprise Streaming for Communications and Learning Track B: (B102) September 23, 2008 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM Use of online video in the enterprise has evolved well beyond the special occasion, rudimentary talking-head videos that characterized early adoption. Whether webcasting executive briefings across the globe or capturing and archiving rich media presentations for training, marketing, sales, and compliance, a growing number of organizations are capitalizing on the capabilities of Web 2.0 technologies. This session will show examples from Fortune 500 organizations of best practices in integrated online video for communications and learning.
Dan Pryor, VP, Corporate Communications, Safeway Andy Aronson, Visual Media Group, Worldwide Marketing and Sales, National Semiconductor Doug Wells, Manager, Streaming Communications, Applied Materials Eric Armstrong, Kontiki, Inc.
Nico Canali De Rossi and Robin Good published a new guide for Master New Media yesterday titled, "Best Live Video Streaming Services Compared - Sharewood Guide", which looks at the some of latest live streaming services that are available to online video publishers, lifecasters and anyone who wants to stream live video. You can read the full article here as this post is just an excerpt of their detailed guide.
The features they covered include: Multimedia/Playlist integration, Text chat, Co-hosting-Multiple web cameras and recording. Included in the guide is the table below that compares the features of the following live video streaming services. I've used a number of these platforms but there are several I'm hearing about for the first time.
This article comes from Streamingmedia.com and was written by Nico McLane. It first appeared in the February/March 2008 issue of Streaming Media Magazine ( Table of Contents • Digital Version) and is described as, "A primer on selecting the right equipment, making the right production decisions, and establishing a solid webcasting plan."
While webcasts are generally a considered a business tool for corporate presentations they are fast becoming a way for content producers to widen their reach to a global audience. Oprah's 10-week web cast series "A New Earth" is a prime example of how an existing brand can embrace a new medium and garner success as a live and on-demand webcast.
McLane writes that, "While a webcast is, by definition, a live event, a key part of a webcast’s success is the value it retains when it is accessed and repurposed after the fact. An effective webcast will live on long after the event has ended, and it has the potential to be repackaged across infinite channels that have a deeper “measure” of return on investment. If you deliver a meaningful, quality product in the live webcast, these are the opportunities that should not be missed or mismanaged."
Within the business setting it's all about numbers and ROI (Return On Investment) and McLane points out that the companies can save significant annual costs by replacing expensive operator-assisted conference calls with live webcasts and webinars. In additional, the viewers of these web-based presentations become active participants in a rich media experience through the use of live chat, document sharing, full motion video and other features which you won't find in an audio-only teleconference feed.
In her article, McLane highlights several key components on how to execute a successful webcast, which are:
The “Grade A” Live Webcast Experience: Click and Go (more...)
Her "Walkthrough Checklist" offers practical tips for success and are all important considerations when you produce a webcast. Such as, lighting, backdrops, what type of microphones to use, projection, camera positions and room layout. Whether it's a webcast or not, these are all fundamental details I cover with each of my productions.
Since it's related to this post, I included the video from the Streaming Media West panel discussion that I participated in "Best Practices in Webcast Production" which I had previously featured here.
It was another busy week in the video and streaming media world and I thought I'd try a new approach to comment on the big events that caught my attention.
Monday, March 3rd
It started on with Oprah's big web cast. Oprah launched a new global web cast series and had record 500,000 simultaneous connections which proved to be too much for the system to handle. I didn't catch it live and only read about it, watched it on demand and talked with a friend who attempted to connect to the live event. He said the video froze, sputtered and quickly dropped and Oprah issued an apology email that followed the next day stating,"More than 500,000 of you simultaneously logged on to watch Oprah Winfrey and Eckhart Tolle live, resulting in 242 Gbps of information moving through the Internet. Unfortunately, some of you experienced delays in viewing the webcast. We are working to identify the specific causes for the problems experienced and will work diligently to rectify them. Harpo Productions, Inc., Move Networks and Limelight Networks recognize that interactive Internet broadcasting to a mass audience is still an emerging medium, and we're proud to have been pioneers in pushing the industry forward. We deeply regret that some of you were not able to participate in Monday night's live Web event and that others did not have an optimal viewing experience"
![The Evolution of Enterprise Video Platforms [Infographic]](http://www.mediaplatform.com/site/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/MPInfo2.png)
go to the table!
