CONFERENCE STREAMING THE WAY FORWARD

Possibly the most significant fully international event for female entrepreneurs took place in Istanbul, Turkey, this week. The Dell Women’s Entrepreneur Network (DWEN) completed its fourth annual event, co-sponsored by Intel. Previous DWEN conferences have been held in New Delhi, India (2012); Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2011); and Shanghai, China (2010). This event was run by Wave Media Communications and the connection with Stockport is that they chose Acrobat Television to film and provide live streaming of the conference.

Says Acrobat Television’s Managing Director David Hill, “It was a great privilege to be entrusted with providing the communications for such an important event. Computer giant Dell expects only the best and we were able to complete a technically complicated job without any glitches”.

Ten cameras including 3 robotic units were used to film all the main conference sessions and five key breakout sessions. The conference was live streamed in two different languages in a total of five different codecs for each, so that it was immediately available for viewing on all platforms from HD to tablet or smartphone – both Apple and Android. The conference was attended by around 700 delegates but watched ‘live’ by many thousands more and will continue to be available on the DWEN web site for some time.

Video streaming is undoubtedly becoming an essential component for conferences and events, as it is an increasingly cost effective way of reaching those invitees who are unable to attend and to spread the message to a much larger audience.

Hill added “We are a trusted supplier to a number of conference companies and the best of those have already taken on live streaming as a fundamental part of their offering. After all, if you are filming for play out at the event anyway, the additional cost of streaming is quite small yet the increased audience potential is huge”.