We undertook our first real test of live streaming an event on campus during the Spring 2011 Commencement ceremonies. Seth Odell’s Real-Time Campus Event Coverage session I attended at the CASE District VI conference last January was enormously helpful in guiding us on a successful path to begin more streaming of events on our campus.

We utilized the Tricaster system already set up in the production room of JQH Arena, and used Ustream as the streaming platform for this event. We also used the Ustream Facebook app to allow users to watch the live stream on our Facebook Page.

Since we considered this a test run, there was no advertising of the fact that we’d be streaming the Commencement ceremonies before the event took place. Once we started streaming and we knew that everything was working fine, we then started to post updates to Facebook and Twitter that the event was live. Updates included notices at the beginning of each Commencement ceremony informing users that the event was now streaming, as well as at the end of each ceremony which pointed users to the archived videos.

Over the three Commencement ceremonies, we had 501 total viewers, which exceeded our expectations for such a low-key test. There have been over 1200 views of the archived videos on Ustream.

Some of our key takeaways included:

• Using the UStream Facebook App is a great way to add a second location for users to watch your streams. The app also allows users to comment and interact using their Facebook profiles.
• Ustream allows the embedding of your streaming video on external sites; we plan on investigating this further for future events.
• A great extra feature of Ustream is that archived videos are immediately available to users once a stream is completed. This is great for posting a raw video of an event immediately after its over while you are editing a well-produced video for final consumption.
• Ustream is free by default, though this includes advertisements on your stream. Typically users watch a 30-second commercial at the beginning of the stream and also have small text ads pop up at the bottom of the screen during the stream. Ustream does offer premium services to remove the ads, which we will be investigating more in the future as well.