Tips from Intel and Prudential on Enterprise Live Event Streaming

Creating a live video event for streaming company-wide is far different than creating on-demand video clips for potential customers.

In a panel discussion at the recent Streaming Media East conference in New York City, live event streaming experts from Prudential, Intel, and Oracle taught the audience how it's done. The panel first tackled the subject of audience expectations, and what success looks like for live event streaming.

"There's a limited amount of bandwidth, and we're really dictated by the edge," began Alan Tardiff, technical specialist at Prudential. "That's the least amount, the lowest common denominator on our network. With that limited bandwidth you're constrained to about 300k to 500k. You're not getting HD. While the people who produce this content want their pictures to look great and really put some lipstick on the pig, if it's not going down those pipes it's not going to reach the end points that it needs to. My group is responsible for getting the CEO message out. We used to have a satellite network. We don't have a satellite network anymore, so we don't go to TVs. We only go online, so it's very important -- so it's mission critical that the CEO's message gets out to everybody."

Adding some humor to the topic was Wayne Waterman, network and system engineer for media and distribution at Intel.

"Flawless execution is a word that lots of people like to bandy about. In live event production, flawless means the audience didn't notice what went wrong," said Waterman with a smile. "Managing the expectations of the clients on how many people are going to be there -- because they always expect more than they're going to get, how many people have problems, and one of the ways that I make certain that success is well-defined is letting people know how to communicate the problems that they have. You put in the troubleshooting link so people can self-help. You put in the email link so they can write to the webcast team. You put in the number for tech so they can check things, and they still email the executive and say 'I can't connect.'"

For much more on live event streaming in the enterprise, watch the full video below.

Troy Dreier's article first appeared on OnlineVideo.net