How to Execute a Successful Webcast
Be prepared for anything; triple redundancy in all things is a good thing. Like a mother who carries Band-Aids, paper clips, and chewing gum, you will need to think and act like my personal hero, MacGyver, and bring extra adapters, cables, extension cords, signal converters, hum eliminators, and a big stick (never assume that audiovisual support will be able to help you).
Most important of all, be sure your location has solid connectivity. What do you do if you arrive on-site to find that your location has no network, even if they swore up and down a thousand times and promised you in writing that it did—or if they told you would be no firewall interference, a dedicated LAN connection to the internet, etc., and all these promises turned out to be lies?
You can still do it! If you work with your CDN engineer there are various clever ways—both manual and automated tests for network connectively—that can save the webcast. The success of your webcast will weigh heavily on the quality of your CDN, their dedication, and know-how. So be nice to your CDN engineers—and be sure you get their cell numbers!
Know your products and know the industry: There are many trade organizations and online forums that one can turn to for guidance when making decisions regarding steaming media events, as well as codec, player, and development issues. Join any group or forum that’s relevant to your work, identify yourself, and take part in the discussion.
Monitor Your Webcast Onsite
If the webcast appears to be streaming along merrily, confirm that all your elements appear as expected from the end user’s perspective. It’s funny how different people will view a webcast. In an enterprise, IT is usually just amazed that the network didn’t go down at all, whereas in marketing and communications, they will notice that the white balance was off, the audio phased out, and that the podium mic appeared to be growing out of someone’s head. It is important to take a broad view and scrutinize the quality of the end product from all these perspectives, instead of declaring success or failure based on just one.
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