When you are working in a communication department, say of a publicly-traded multinational company, you are apt to be confronted with organizing a webcast at some point. And just maybe you feel a bit confused, overwhelmed, annoyed or whatever the emotion might be. Then it’s time for a pat on the back, a brief motivational talk and a little help from the expert: I herewith offer you my personal, fully-fledged communication-webcast checklist/questionnaire:
- Select a suitable time and place; not early Monday morning or late Friday afternoon, not at 7 am or 4 pm, if you have an audience, give them time to arrive and find a seat before starting your event, inform all participants that there will be a webcast today and that the entire session will be recorded.
- Find a location that is congenial for setting up electronic equipment, that is accessible via elevator or has a back entrance – nobody wants to carry heavy boxes of equipment up numerous flights of stairs.
- When will the external streaming provider (e.g. Solutionpark) come by to set up the equipment? Is the room / auditorium / facility unlocked e.g. the evening before the event? What type of security access is necessary? Who has the key?
- Have at least 2 tables and a couple chairs ready for your external streaming provider to set up their equipment. Where will their place be (in the back of the room, on the side)? Is there space for the camera tripod? Any pillars in the way? Or other obstacles?
- Make sure there is a very good, reliable and strong power line as well as Internet access for live webcasts via satellite.
- Do you have adapters for foreign speakers? Not all countries use the same electrical plugs. Make sure you have the necessary adapters available.
- Is there enough lighting? Or are extra spotlights necessary?
- Are a laptop and beamer already installed? Who knows how to operate the system?
- What about electronic blinds to darken the room?
- Microphones, microphones, microphones, have more than extra ones, test them, make sure the battery won’t die on you during the event. How are them mounted? What range do they have? Remember, if the speakers aren’t talking into the microphone, what they are saying will not be recorded.
- Make sure the podium or stage is not slippery in any way. You don’t want your speakers crashing down and breaking a leg, right?
- Is there a bottle of water for the speaker on the speaker’s desk? And a nice glass. Please no paper or plastic cups. That really looks cheap in a video.
- Tell your speakers to bring or send their slide presentations as power point files, electronically, be it on their laptops or on a USB key or CD-ROM. Whatever they are bringing has to be compatible with the equipment onsite. Otherwise it won’t work.
- Will the speakers be using a laser pointer, remote control or other such device? Please test it in advance, not 5 minutes before you start.
- Make sure that your speakers get presentation training or media training and that they remove all key, coins etc from their pockets. There is nothing more annoying than a speaker rattling the stuff in his pockets.
- Will you have simultaneous translators? What language will be recorded on the webcast?
- How long will the webcast be? 10 minutes, over the course of 3 days? That makes a big difference for the encoding later on. So when you are briefing your external streaming provider (e.g. Solutionpark), don’t forget to tell them what time span you are planning on recording.
- Are there any legal ramifications? Does your external streaming provider (e.g. Solutionpark) need to sign a confidentiality agreement?
- Who is the responsible contact person onsite????
And finally
- Who will upload the link to the (company) website?
I think this should be a good starting point…….
The place was full of interesting equipment they had built into mobile trolleys themselves as they explained how they’d go on location and record, encode and stream a company’s investor presentation, press conference or other live event onto the web. So how would this work for us? Basically we wanted to replace the old way of recording a staff event on VHS cassettes (!) which would be copied manually and then sent by mail to the various offices around the world. How endlessly tedious and time-consuming!
The good thing was that our streaming provider has their own encoding center where all the equipment is permanently installed on site. This means that they are always ready with many encoders and backup devices available, a redundant and reliable Internet upstream, optimized connectivity to Akamai (a 
I truly enjoyed working with ‘my personal webcast team’ and we all shared in the success of making ithappen every time no matter what. Despite a little adrenalin rush before the start of every recording or even the live transmission, I was always excited to work with the team and have the people from Solutionpark come by with all their sophisticated equipment. Actually, that was the best part of it all. Who doesn’t like new gadgets, ha?! It seemed as though they brought a new piece of hardware every time. They use some really cool stuff. Plus, the technological advances simply make it easier to get the job done.