Web Streaming, Getting Started With Your Live Stream Event

Web streaming is a fantastic way to expand the reach of your live event. There are limitless opportunities to allow your web participants to feel just as engaged as the people sitting in the room.
Here we will walk you through a few of the special considerations for live, one-time events, to ensure your web stream is a huge success!

Special events come with unique challenges when it comes to planning a live web stream. The trickiest can be the location. Often you will be broadcasting from a venue where all of the equipment is being rented and set up just for that event. A good site survey with all of the contractors can ensure that the web stream team has a good handle on the broadcast equipment we will be connecting to. That allows you to work out any problems ahead of time and make sure we have adequate space for our streaming equipment.
Additionally, an advanced meeting with the staff at the venue helps ensure that all of the network and power needs will be covered on the big day. That meeting can also allow you the opportunity to run a complete test of the systems in advance.
There is no better way to be sure that the network connections will work flawlessly than to give it a complete trial run. Finally, coordinating with your web staff is key to ensuring that your web stream can be integrated and promoted with the tools you already have in place. The goal is always to make that integration and effortless and seamless as possible for your existing team.
Those pre-show site walks, meetings and coordination would be a standard part of any live streaming package we would put together for your event.

There are so many ways to enhance your web stream with extra online features to help your remote participants feel like they are a part of the event. Brainstorming to come up with the right ones, is the fun part!
If your event is a class, perhaps you would like to include Q&A features on your streaming page to allow your viewers to virtually “raise their hand” and ask questions. Online polls and quizzes can help you assess if you are keeping them interested when you don’t have the ability to see them. Studio Spectrum can also build in online tools for turning in assignments if that is a vital component.
Perhaps your event is more public, like a State-Of-The-City address or conference. Integrating social media can draw on the tools your viewers may already be using to communicate. It also has the added benefit of encouraging your viewers to help spread the word about your event to their established social media networks.

For more corporate events, like employee town halls or shareholder meetings, you may want to consider providing viewers to more than one content window. Allowing them to watch the speaker in one window while also viewing the PowerPoint presentation or other materials in another window, creates a much more engaging presentation. Additionally, building in a tool for downloading and keeping those materials is always appreciated by participants.
Finally, don’t forget to think about your viewers that can’t watch live. There are many good reasons to make your presentation available after it ends for folks that couldn’t watch in real time. Many of the special features mentioned above can be modified to allow your viewers to still feel engaged after the event is over.
We are here to work with you to build the right collection of features to allow your event to shine and connect with your viewers. Just give us a call.