Yesterday, there was an horrible earthquake in Haiti that measured 7.0 on the Richter scale‎. We won’t know until the sun comes up how horrible it was, because electricity AND telephone service was knocked out.

My long time friend and college homeboy, Pascal Antoine is Haitian. He founded and has been maintaining a website called HaitiXchange.com for a lot of years now.

I normally don’t watch the news at all, but I’ve been fascinated by the recent trend of channels showing 3% news and 97% punditry (people giving their OPINIONS about what the news means instead of showing us a bunch more news stories). So I turn on the television around 8pm and flip to CNN, where the slot says “Campbell Brown”, so I’m like “*yawn* Here we go!”, and she has a different look on her face and the marquis below her reads something like “Hospital Collapses In Haiti”.

The fact that I randomly flipped to a channel and they were DELIVERING news instead of GIVING THEIR OPINIONS about the news told me this was something serious.. On top of the fact that there are only three news stories that any of the channels are talking about at any given time. ‘Matter of fact, they just brought back the White House party crashers! :/

So anyway, I was like “I need to make sure my homeboy Pascal heard about this! :O”. So I punch up his number on the cell, and he’s like “Hello?”. I’m like “Yo. It’s Bill”. He goes “My friend Bill just called me…” and I’m like WTF is he talking about??? :D

So I’m like “Listen man. I’m watching CNN and they said a hospital collapsed in Haiti..” and then I’m listening to what he’s saying and I realize he’s got to be broadcasting on the air, live. hahaha I thought I was offering him a SCOOP and here he was already broadcasting the latest information to his HaitiXchange viewers! :D

Realizing what time it was, I hustled off the phone with him and pulled up his site on my computer where he was using Livestream (formerly Mogulus) to embed live video & audio on his homepage like I do on http://billcammack.com/live/. I was like “SWEET!!!”….. until the embed informed me that he had already reached the maximum number of viewers on his stream…..

When I saw this, I first thought it was some kind of Fail Whale, like Twitter loves to do, so I refreshed the page and it gave me the exact same message. Now, I was like WHAT. THE. ****?!?!?!?!?!?! I couldn’t believe it. What the hell is a maximum amount of viewers to a ******* live stream? :/

I found the answer in the Livestream FAQ:

“My channel is limited to 50 viewers, why is this?”
When you create a new Livestream Free channel, it is by default unverified,which means that you can stream to a maximum of 50 concurrent viewers at a time, and that your channel is not listed in the Livestream Channel Guide. Verification is designed to give all of our best producers maximum exposure, and to ensure consistent quality and compliance, throughout the Livestream Network.
To apply for verification first, make sure your content complies with the Livestream Terms of Use
Next, log into the Livestream Account Center. In the channels tab you will see the Verification status of each of your Livestream Free channels. To Verify a channel, click on the link and fill out the Livestream Free Channel Verification Application.

So, at least this was Pascal’s fault and not an imposed limitation by Livestream (disclosure: I have friends that work for Livestream). I used to use the service lightly when it was called Mogulus, but I pretty much stick to Ustream because it’s simple, reliable, I can broadcast to it live from my g1 (google phone) at any time, and relevant to this topic, I’ve seen HUNDREDS of people able to simultaneously watch a stream.

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So anyway, I kept hitting ‘refresh’ until someone’s connection dropped and I got in. Pascal was sitting there on camera, laptop open, cell phone in hand, taking calls from people who had LITERALLY the latest information. A friend of his, Francois, I believe, was there in Pascal’s studio speaking to his sister in Haiti who suddenly reported that another aftershock was just starting. Another guy was calling from Peru, I believe, and he was in touch with ham radio operators who were broadcasting information from Haiti. I put in my two cents by typing hyperlinks into the meebo chat that was embedded under Pascal’s live video and letting people know via Twitter & Facebook that we were getting up-to-the-minute info over @ HaitiXchange.

I stayed tuned in because this was really fascinating. This was FOR the people, BY the people. No spin. No Executive Producers. Purely people that were concerned about the situation and trying to do whatever they could to get a handle on the situation. Telephone service was basically nonexistent. Some people were able to communicate because they were down @ the Red Cross where they were able to share an internet connection with potentially THOUSANDS of people looking for refuge or aid. The chat room was buzzing. People were calling in from all over the place with the exact same story that they weren’t able to contact their families in Haiti. Rumors went around that Hotel Montana had been destroyed and that a rapper associated with Wyclef Jean named “Jimmy O” had died in the earthquake. People were concerned about their friends from the HaitiXchange forums that currently live in Haiti and that they hadn’t heard from since the earthquake hit. Pascal’s pops called his cell phone to make sure he was ok and see whether Pascal was in Haiti or in the USA…

This was international community coming together, communicating, brainstorming & consoling each other when it really counts. Instead of people being absolutely alone wherever they were, they had a site where they could get information they didn’t have and share information they did have. To Me, that’s one of the best things about Social Media. Yeah, it’s all cute that people get to shill for their businesses and try to make some money *yawn* but way more importantly, you don’t have to sit around watching some television channel that has zero interest in a situation other than the fact that it’s “breaking news” and they know they’re going to get ratings by talking about it. You get to be there when the people that are being affected reach out to each other and come together for the common good.

The sun still isn’t up yet, so we’ll know more in a few hours about the extent of the devastation. Good Luck to everyone that has friends, family & loved ones in Haiti and especially in Port-au-Prince that they’re safe but just without the ability to communicate. I’m sure that cell phones were left inside houses when people fled, phones and computers have run out of batteries, electricity’s failed to modems & routers… Keep the faith that they may be minus some material possessions, but they’re hopefully alive and as well as they possibly could be in this extreme situation.

Good Luck to the people of Haiti…

~ Bill Cammack | @BillCammack

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So I just ruined an experience for my friend Keith when I posted a Facebook status update about who won the Carano vs Cyborg fight last night. That’s my fault, and I hate it when that happens to me… Except it brings up an interesting point about the real-time nature of the internet these days.

I already know to avoid *ALL* areas of Social Media between the time that something happens that I recorded on my DVR and the time that I watch it. For instance… If I intend to watch an episode of “24″ and it airs at 9pm EST and I don’t want to hear anyone spoil it for me, I’m not going to look at Google, eMail, Social Media sites, Instant Messenger programs, my own blog or ANYTHING ELSE until I watch the episode.

This is because this is 2009. People are LIVE-BLOGGING events at this point. I’m sure you could have hit Google ten minutes after the fight concluded and found the results, the exact time the fight ended, how it ended, who won and people’s opinions about the entire thing. By the next morning, you can see pictures of the event as well as video from the post-fight interviews.

So, I DVRed the fight just like Keith did… The difference is that the *FIRST* thing I did when I woke up was watch the fight, because I couldn’t possibly have started my Social Media day in good conscience without clearing my desk of things that I didn’t want to be prematurely made aware of.

Also, Keith asked me about a spoiler warning. Technically, he’s right about that. In reality, the Cyborg/Carano fight ended sometime before 1am EST. I posted about it at 10am EST, nine (9) hours later. In fact, that was THREE HOURS after I commented about it on my own blog post on my site. So, while I considered myself deliberately delaying discussing it on Facebook, Keith felt like I discussed it too early, and I understand why he feels that way.

Unfortunately, this very situation is why newspapers are going out of business. The time it takes them to report the news is too long. I found out via Twitter from a woman who speaks French and lives in NYC that there was an earthquake in Tokyo and emailed my homegirl Masami who lives over there to see if she was ok.

That’s how we’re livin’ now… In real-time. So, while *I* felt like I was sitting on information for AGES and AGES before posting about it to Facebook, Keith, who lives some kind of normal-person life, was counting on everybody that he follows on every Social Media site he’s a part of to not talk about Carano/Cyborg until he got around to watching it, OR to have the courtesy to put the word “spoiler” in media they create an entire 1/3 day after the event actually occurred.

So the question becomes.. How long until something’s no longer a “spoiler”?

How long after Chris Brown kicks his girlfriend’s ass are you supposed to wait before you discuss it on Twitter or Facebook without calling it a spoiler? How long do you wait after finding out that an EARTHQUAKE hit your homegirl’s city to check to see if she’s ok? How long do you wait to say “I told y’all this chick was going to kick this other chick’s ass” when the information had already been available on the internet for NINE HOURS before you no longer need to label it ***spoiler***?

~Bill | @BillCammack

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It’s 2009 now, and everybody and LITERALLY their mother has their own web show. *yawn*

It’s time to move forward. This year is all about Live Streaming. All of a sudden, everybody wants to do it, but they just don’t know how. They think that turning on a webcam and having any audio at all equates to a quality experience for their viewers. Nope. That’s not how it works.

Here’s a list of live streaming tips that will bring you from ZERO to HERO in no time flat:

2006

This is a screencap from November 2006 from Jonny Goldstein‘s live show, “Reinventing Television”. I’m not on screen, but I’m in the text chat.

2008

I streamed several sessions live from PodCampNYC 2.

I did live shows from my “Live” page:

2009

“Everybody wants to get into the act”. I already asked the question “Why are you doing a live show?” back in June, 2008, when there seemed to be an epidemic of people creating garbage live channels where you could watch them eat cereal, sleep, or leave the camera running while they walk to the general store and back.

So now that live streaming is a fad, it’s time to hand out some tips on how to do it properly…

Hire a host

It’s literally IMPOSSIBLE to party and host a live stream at the same time. Impossible. You’re either paying attention to the event or you’re paying attention to the quality of your broadcast. If you want to participate in the event, hire someone else to be the host of your stream. Do you see Dick Clark running around Times Square? No. He’s the HOST. His job is to HOST. It’s other people’s jobs to run around in the streets getting interviews.

Check your audio

Audio off? No good. Audio too “hot” (distorting)? No good. Audio on, but you can’t make out anything that anyone’s saying, because they’re too far away? No good.

Teach people how to use the mic

If you’re using a lavalier mic, which is supposed to be attached to a person’s body, TEACH people that you hand the mic to not to attempt to swallow it as if it were a hand-held mic. When lavalier audio levels are checked, the mic is relatively far away from the person’s mouth. Moving it closer will overdrive your signal and distort the audio. On top of that, people breathing directly onto a mic that’s not made for that causes the levels to jump up and down, erratically.

Use a monitor

If you’re using a webcam that’s attached to a laptop, make sure you MONITOR the output. If you rotate the laptop screen so that you can look at it while you’re standing up in front of it, you are ALSO pointing the webcam AT. THE. CEILING. Either mount your webcam on something other than your laptop screen or if it’s built in, like a MacBook Pro iSight, make sure you point the camera at the PEOPLE, and not AT. THE. CEILING.

Select a good location

I saw one stream last night where the camera was sitting on a desk, and there were people crowded in front of it. The viewer experience was as if we were seated at a party where everyone else was standing up with their backs to us. No good. Remember that your laptop is now a CAMERA and not just a computer.

Tell people where to stand

When people are ready to make speeches, MAKE. THEM. stand in front of the camera instead of off to the side, or completely out of view. This is where having a designated host comes in handy as well as using a monitor.

Plan your location ahead of time

In my PodCampNYC2 video I posted above, I had the perfect position for filming the presentations, except I didn’t realize that the old-ass school they decided to use didn’t have electrical outlets in the desks in all the rooms. I was running out of power on my camera that I was shooting with as well as my laptop that I was broadcasting with, so I had to go to where the only outlet was in the front of the room.

Make sure you plan your location of the camera and the direction(s) the camera’s facing for the benefit of your VIEWERS, not for the convenience of people that don’t want to properly host their own live streams.

Bring your own internet connection

I was the only one live streaming from PodCampNYC2, because I was the only one that brought my own EV-DO card. Lots of other people ADVERTISED that they were going to stream live, because they were counting on the venue a) HAVING wifi, and b) having GOOD ENOUGH wifi for them to live stream over with everyone else pulling on the same resources.

Don’t advertise what you can’t deliver. Bring your own connection and test it ahead of time if you can.

Make sure you have a text chat

Without a text chat, you’re as useless as television. Make sure you have a way for your viewers to ask you questions, such as “Why are we looking at the ceiling?” and “Who is that person, and do they have a website?” and “How much money did you raise for the charity from walk-ins?”.

Have a chat moderator

This is technically the same tip as “Have a host”, except the moderator’s job is to provide Quality Assurance for your live stream viewers. If someone’s acting up in the chat, they get kick/banned. If someone asks a question, it doesn’t just float by. There’s someone assigned to watch the board and act as a go-between between the host and the viewers. Jonny Goldstein adopted this style for “Jonny’s Par-Tay” by bringing on Scott Stead as his “Super Producer”.

Recognize who the STAR is

If you’re using a live streaming site that allows you to have a co-host, recognize who the star is. Once you figure out who the star is… Normally, the person whose NAME. IS. ON. THE. SITE…. Make sure THAT PERSON is in the big box and anyone else that feels they need to be on screen is in the SMALL box. Nobody’s tuning in to see “the sidekick show”. They’re tuning in to HEAR, and more importantly, *SEE* the person they came to hear and see. Ensure that they want to come back the next time you announce a stream by giving them the experience they expected when they show up the first time… and EVERY time.

Have a call-in number

As you can see in my clip above, I’m running not ONE, but TWO audio “dial-ins”. The left side is coming from skype and the right side is coming from iChat/AIM. I’m talking to four other people and they’re talking to me and to each other. We’ve taken it entirely outside of the realm of “broadcasting at” and now everyone’s participating.

Plan topics and guests

Make sure people know what we’re going to be discussing in the live stream, and, if possible, who the guests are going to be. Jonny did a great job with this, lining up guests ahead of time and then advertising during the week who was going to be on:

This way, you get people who are actually INTERESTED in the topic showing up, participating and contributing.

The customer’s always right

Bill Cammack & Phil Campbell

There’s no reason to live stream unless you’re providing VALUE to your viewers/participants. If you’re not focused on what the audience is going to get out of the stream, don’t bother. If you’re serious, take your show on the road, like Phil Campbell.

Phil streams live using his phone, which also allows him to receive text chat messages WHILE he’s recording. You want to know more about something or see something again? Type it to Phil and he’ll make it happen.

So, If you’re gonna do it, do it right…. Like A-Rod & Barry Bonds will tell you… Go BIG!…
or Go HOME!

~Bill Cammack

Twitter: BillCammack
Social Media Category: billcammack.com/category/social-media
Subscribe via RSS or Email
 

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Thanks *ENTIRELY* to becoming aware of Jonny Goldstein and his show Reinventing Television in October, 2006, I’ve been doing live shows for almost two years now.

At this point, doing live shows has become a fad. Justin.TV, LiveVideo, Yahoo Live, Mogulus, Operator11, BlogTV, Ustream, Stickam, is YouTube doing live video now? There are tons of people doing live shows now, but to what effect? For what purpose?

I streamed several sessions live from PodCampNYC 2.

I do live shows from my “Live” page:

I still follow and participate in Jonny’s shows on BlogTV:

IME, There are only two reasons to do a show live. 1) You’re broadcasting time-sensitive information, or 2) You want your audience to be able to interact live with the hosts & guests.

Time-Sensitive Programming

Time-sensitive information would be the new Apple announcements as they’re occurring or maybe a sporting event like a football game or an MMA event. Basically, it’s a replacement for people not being able to travel to that location and view it themselves, in person. This is why I was streaming sessions from PodCampNYC. There were people in other towns that I was in communication with that were interested in seeing what was going on in NYC *while* it was going on.

In this case, there was communication with me, but not with the people doing the panels. The idea was to give the experience of “being there”. Then again, *I* was the one doing the show, not the panelists, so there actually WAS direct interaction with the host.

Most of the services I mentioned will save your video for you as an archive. This means that if your information isn’t time-sensitive, more people will watch the archive asynchronously than will tune in at that particular day and time to watch your show live. The only incentive they have to tune in live is reason #2.

Audience Participation

The only reason to bother tuning in to an internet show at a particular time instead of watching it whenever you get around to it is that you’re going to have a different experience during the live show than you have watching the archive.

George Kelly did a live show on Yahoo a few months back that I thought was really enjoyable and well-done. George plays guitar, and instead of having people tune in to watch him play whatever he had already decided, he was taking requests from the chat room. Automatically, there was value added, because the show was being created on the fly. Meanwhile, the text-chatters were socializing amongst themselves. George was in and out of attention to the chat room and “a fine time was had by all”. :D

Jonny Goldstein‘s shows are fun because he does them consistently and has built up a “studio audience” that’s gotten to know each other via his show and maintained our relationships via other formats of social media. Jonny’s very attentive to the chat room, and he’s more of a facilitator of conversation than someone that just sits there talking to a guest as if there’s no live audience.

The reason I was thinking about this is that as stingy as companies are in trying to leverage pre-recorded video and UGC (User-Generated Content), I can’t see *WHY* they would turn around and waste their money making LIVE shows that are the exact same experience as the saved archive. Where’s the ROI? Are there really so many extra people tuning in to the live show that it justifies the expenditure? Isn’t it just preaching to the choir? For that, assemble the same hosts & guests, turn a video camera on, turn it back off, edit & upload that video and you’ll have just as many people watching it while retaining ducats in your video budget to create some worthwhile programming.

Perhaps ask yourself “What difference does it make if my audience watches my show live versus if they watch it later today?” or “What difference does it make if my audience watches this show next Tuesday, or next month?” If the answer is *NONE*, then save your money and focus on pre-recorded content.

~Bill Cammack

Twitter: BillCammack
Subscribe via RSS or Email
Social Media Category: billcammack.com/category/social-media
 

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Podcamp with BlackRobb & the Hip-Hop Association, originally uploaded by thehalfshow.com.

Bill Cammack, streaming live from PodCampNYC.

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