HOW TO MAKE VIDEO AMPLIFY AND AUTHENTICATE COMMUNITY ACTIVITY

I have been live streaming video for about 6 years now in different guises. From the pre YouTube days when I needed the help of specialist media companies to live stream, and virtually a whole server to push the video out (with a massive bandwidth bill to boot) – to a few years back when I discovered Mogulus (now Livestream), Ustream, FlashMeeting, QIK et al.

It always struck me very forcibly how important it is to get both the mediums – (real time synchronous video with commenting from viewers on Twitter) and asynchronous (after the event more polished and post produced embedded in a series of good resources) to play to their various strengths.

One of my first video jobs was to build a website for the world’s first Virtual Opera in a girls secondary school in Kings Cross and show the daily rehearsals as they were performed as a series of flash movies then stream the finished opera in real time – twice!

Part of the deal – which was sponsored by Nesta/ Futurelab as it was then was to get match funding from Commercial companies to enable provisioning of kit and services for the event. But the Commercial companies, at first, couldn’t see the concept – they didn’t “get it” – remember this was pre YouTube.

So for weeks I shot digital video of rehearsals – then went home in the evening – edited and encoded the video and then renecoded it into flash uploaded them to my server and wrote the HTML for the flash movies and created the finished web pages. The videos then began to tell a story and people started to understand the filmed narrative.

As the site began to grow and the movies began to populate the website we got more and more sponsorship because the companies could see the narrative emerging and the community started to tune in and, in turn, bounce off of that content. But more than that the community was global so the opportunity to show sponsorship on a much wider platform riding on the tails of a very local story became an established model. So when YouTube came along later it wasn’t that unexpected to me.

Parents were able to see their children rehearsing and the countdown to the live stream of the performance. Companies could see their ROI grow day by day with the popularity of the site which was getting a lot of media attention as it grew – everyone’s attention was captured because of the community looking in on itself and responding.

So the asynchronous video helped to magnify interest in the event and the event drove the activity and buzz around the community. It was a virtuous circle but also a hell of a lot of hard work into the early hours of every morning for about three months…

LIVE STREAMING vs ASYNCHRONOUS VIDEO BROADCAST – how they are different

Fast forward seven years past many many jobs and contracts to the Open Source Schools UnConference this week where I was able to broadcast out live from the NCSL using a Mac laptop and a “dongle” – it’s nothing new I’ve been doing it for years.

Over the past two years I have perfected the use of a mini outside broadcast portable filming unit I carry everywhere with me – it easily enables me to film, stream and document the day for others who could not make it there physically. Six years ago this was my dream – today it’s a reality and the technology to produce live streaming is getting smaller and more powerful by the week…

Inside this case I have 2 tape DV cameras, 3 Flip cams, allied mini tripods, broadcast quality external mikes, ethernet cables,