5 Things I Learned about Webcasting Live to 6 Countries (Also known as ‘Ryan Seacrest’s Job Isn’t As Easy as it Looks’)

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be broadcast live to six countries simultaneously over the Internet?

Do your body particles begin to split or sprinkle like the scenes in TV’s Star Trek…beam me over to Italy to deliver this piece of the agenda, won’t you, Scotty?

Well no, I’ve lived to tell the tale and it’s not quite as out-of-body as that. And it was definitely an eye-opener.

What should you do if you’re thinking of webcasting via Internet, yourself, at your next big shindig? Here are a few things to chew on, based on the real-life experiment held on May 11 and 12 when Milana Leshinsky, Michael Port and I held the ‘Power of Collaboration’ SuperConference to a live audience in New York City.

We send our special thanks to the early-adopting souls who demonstrated their determination to learn the ins and outs of Collaboration even if they couldn’t be with us in person, AND of course to our intrepid production manager Joe Taylor Jr. who made it possible.

“Day 2 was also great. This was one of the best conferences that I have been involved with. The presenters were great and the material is practical. I can only imagine the energy at the conference. I could feel some of it even through the webcast.”

Thanks again, Cindy Streekstra

(1) First, it is an actual rush to know that you’re broadcasting live, so be prepared for it to tap into your energy: you’ll feel it physically at the end of the day. And the greater the reach of your broadcast – in our case to business owners in Italy, Ireland, the UK, Australia, Canada and all over the US – the more rewarding it is.

If like me, you believe that everything is energy you’ll know what I mean when I say ‘remember with webcasting you will need more than you’ll usual amount of energy in reserve.’

Ineresting tidbit: since the event, we’ve discovered there were at least 2 participants who for physical reasons would not have been able to attend the SuperConference live – even if it had been next door. Remember this when you are marketing the webcast portion of the event.

(2) On that topic of marketing, were I to do this again, I would design two marketing schedules – one for the live event and one for the webcast. There are enough different benefits and enough messages to convey for each, that two campaigns are warranted, with a timetable that’s thought through and makes sense.

The details of how to best do this would warrant some significant thought, as the debate about it can get quite heated: On one hand, if you market the webcast too hard, do you risk ‘losing’ live participants? On the other, isn’t it about the best solution for the attendee?

Even if they lived down the street from the Jewish Community Center in New York, if they understood they would be missing the personal interaction by attending remotely – I believe I would much rather they remained ensconced in their PJs with PB&J at hand, so they could unabashedly get up to their elbows in the conference materials – and maybe even implement them right then and there.

Side note: This is different from when you are marketing a live teleseminar and part of your marketing says ‘if-you-can’t-attend-you-also-can-get-the-recording.’ There just isn’t as much of a difference when it comes to phone stuff.

(3) Even though it’s a pretty big deal and it would be easy to get a tad flustered, it’s important that the environment is set up so the presenters can remain centered. I found it very tempting to split my attention and try to go 101% for the webcasters, and 101% for the people in front of us.

For this reason, the next time we deliver a webcast event, I’d hire a separate Event Manager specifically for the virtual folk. Their job? To make what’s broadcasting via webcast *even better* than the live experience, because the opportunity to do that exists.

You know what I meant. Think about it…

Are you like me, and chose not to go see Pavarotti in his Farewell Tour this year because you know the DVD will be so much better, with all the talented cameramen cutting in and out?

Sure, there’s the rush of being there, and of course if you do go you can say you did. (No one ever says ‘I was there when the DVD came out 10 years later, no matter who is doing the farewell.’)

So when you’re producing a live event via webcast, recognize you’ve already done the hard part – found a venue and secured technology to make the webcast possible. Given that, find someone to speak ‘Ryan-Seacrest-like’ directly to the webcast audience in a manner specific to their situation. The presenters who are managing the energy of the live participants are not the right people to do this – if you try, you run a very high risk of shortchanging both groups.

I know, Ryan seems to do a pretty good job, but he’s not teaching ‘Exactly How to Pitch A Collaboration Partner’ or the ’7 Rules for Remarkable Projects’ or coaching in hot-seat formation on the fly. No offense, Ryan. So yes, I’d recruit an Associate Presenter, a partner Coach/Facilitator or even an apprentice-in-training to do this piece next time.

(4) Something else unexpected was we had some fantastic responses to the webcast that we learned mightily from. I mean, even more so than some of the live feedback, believe it or not. We discovered that webcast participant-types, like most early-adopters of technology, are innovators, and generous with their own creativity? Check out Kris’ note below, and if you aren’t already in the habit of speedily and unreservedly implementing what you learn from your biz’s feedback, set this up now.

Hi Andrea,

You rock, Kris Carey www.lifestylecatalysts.com

Needless to say, we’re glad Kris and compadres got so much out of the SuperConference. Even more so though, we’re grateful to her for showing us how we can raise the grain on the webcast experience for next year.

Perhaps we’ll coordinate large-scale venues in more than one city where the webcast is projected onto a large screen. Or at the very least, follow Kris’ leadership and encourage people to congregate the way they did in lovely San Fran. Fun stuff.

(5) This goes hand-in-hand with #3. Surprisingly despite several invitations, for the most part, the webcast participants did not submit questions. With a good technical team in place, you can set it up so that questions can be submit in real-time to the main venue, and a designated person can ask them. Kinda like at Sotheby’s where (I’m told) a wealthy art afficionado can phone in his bid at the biggest auction of the year.

This is what we did. I for one was pretty excited to have this happen. I dunno, it taps into my sense of ‘how cool was that show Donahue, when it first came out, the way he interacted with the audience and a voice on the phone in the overhead speakers, etc.’

But, we got just one question over the entire 2 days: A huge hand-written note ‘We want to see KERRI and ERICKA!’

Ericka and Kerri were being featured in a segment about the difference between a Virtual Assistant who just does what they’re told and an Online Business Manager or Online Publications Manager who has an honest-to-goodness attitude of ‘There is no problem that can’t be solved or worked around.’ Priceless stuff, when it comes to growing your biz over the $250,000 mark.

These two lovely ladies are an integral part of the team and even though they are both super camera-shy, we did manage to get a photo in the end (at left.)

But I digress. What I would do next time is assign the eliciting of questions to the Webcast-focussed Production Manager, or, try something like a one-hour Q&A session with a deputy, et al, after each day’s agenda was covered. A little extra oomph to get through the remote-ness of the webcast folk would do the trick, I believe, and reap a lot of rewards when it comes to improving the webcast experience.

Heck, I’ll stop right here and say I’d drop everything and tap into the wisdom of my co-presenter Milana Leshinsky, who has developed an arsenal of wisdom about how to engage people from afar, through her TeleSummit model which she revealed in great detail in the agenda – thanks for all the notes Milana!

(6) Bonus ‘Thing’ I learned about webcasting. There’s both an art and a science. The science part is what turns many people off the idea in the first place. Solution? Hire a professional. In our case, Joe Taylor was speedy, economical and provided beyond-the-call-of-duty quality product. The camera work in our webcast is top-notch and makes viewing and reviewing a pleasure.

As for the art part? You know how they say the ‘camera puts 10 pounds on you?’ Well, they told me – and I trust them – that having 3 cameras on us didn’t equal to 30 extra pounds, but I still have to figure out how to make it so they always get my best ‘side.’

(7) Bonus ‘thing’ number 2. It doesn’t matter if you’re webcasting or playing only to a live audience – after 5 years of doing live events large and small in multiple countries, here is my big ‘thing’ – make sure you have great, great, content.

You don’t have to have a million year’s worth, but make sure you’re willing to go deep, and live in the moment – there are parts of the Power of Collaboration Conference that went completely off-script – and they ended up being some of the most advanced material I personally have ever presented. Besides, I just get annoyed at watered-down content, don’t you?

If Michael, Milana and I didn’t ‘live’ our business lives the way we do – in the moment with clients digging deep into their business-building issues and overcoming speed bumps every day – we could not have responded with case-studies and tested how-to steps the way we did when put on the spot. And put on the spot we were.

(30+30+30+10=100, anyone? Inside joke to attendees as this small segment on ‘How to Share the Money: A Formula’ ended up taking triple the amount of time originally alloted – what a delight!)

So I guess the last major thing I learned was even though the live event feels like the ‘pinnacle’ – how it goes depends on how you walk the talk on a day-to-day basis.

Until next year, when we’ll be announcing our annual conference, you can watch the online video of the Power of Collaboration Conference in its entirely (or in segments, whatever is most useful to you) for just $197 – a one-time fee that includes the 98-page Participant Workbook, a full set of PowerPoint Slides, and online video that you can watch as many times as you like. Click here and hop to! Http://www.PowerofCollaboration.com

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