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HOW THE MET OPERA LEVERAGES BRIGHTCOVE VIDEO FOR STREAMING

bsp-admin-1 on April 25, 2021

There’s a special connection between performers and their audience, an almost electric energy that flows between them. An audience’s enthusiasm pushes performers to new heights, which only intensifies the audience’s reaction. So what happens when that connection is broken? Can it be made in other ways?

Answering those questions takes creativity, which, fortunately, performing arts organizations have an abundance of. Take the Metropolitan Opera. For the Met, rising to the challenge of the past year has meant using video to unlock new ways to engage fans, monetize content, and grow its audience, even with its entire performance season cancelled.

“The combination of the arts and technology is pretty powerful. It has completely expanded our audience in such wonderful and exciting ways. It’s changed the game in some sense for us,” says Mia Bongiovanni, Assistant General Manager of Media at the Metropolitan Opera. “What we want more than anything, and I think our audience wants more than anything, is that we return to performing on our stage, hopefully as quickly as we can. But we have the opportunity now to welcome in everyone who has reached out to us in this time and think about creative ways to keep engaged.”

A TREASURE TROVE OF ARCHIVAL CONTENT

The Met Opera has always embraced technology and had already laid the groundwork to reach its audience on mobile, web, and TV before 2020. “When we started ‘Met Opera on Demand,’ that technology was our bridge to the audience. We made sure that we had a platform in place to reach them wherever it was convenient,” says Bongiovanni. “Thankfully we were able to put our rich catalog into play very quickly and start connecting with people. We’re fortunate to have extensive programming going back to when we started broadcasting in the 1970s, our radio broadcasts going back to the 1930s, and our ‘Live in HD’ series.” At the very start of the pandemic, the Met started streaming “encore” performances nightly from its extensive library. As a result, these streams garnered more than 408 million total viewing minutes, and the number of Met Opera on Demand paid subscribers more than doubled.

CREATING NEW CONTENT FROM HOME

The Metropolitan Opera’s “At Home Gala,” proudly streamed by Brightcove, was a virtual event featuring more than 40 artists performing for an audience of more than 750,000 people from 150 countries. “It was one of the greatest projects I’ve ever worked on. And it was an emotional experience,” says Bongiovanni. Making use of whatever technology artists had available at home, new performance content came together with some masterful orchestration. “It was wonderful to see our artists figure out how to bring their creativity to life within the confines of their home, and into people’s homes,” says Bongiovanni. “If we needed more light, they’d grab an old lamp. If we needed to change the camera angle, they’d prop their laptop up on a ladder or an ironing board, whatever. It was very homemade, and therefore very human.” The Gala also featured prerecorded segments showcasing the extraordinary Met Orchestra and Chorus.

REACHING NEW AUDIENCES AND DEMOCRATIZING THE ARTS

With people having more time at home to explore the arts, opera seems to be having a moment. “We have all of these new people out there who are discovering that opera is a wonderful art form. They may never have listened to an opera before or thought they would enjoy it, but they’re discovering it. And for us, of course, it’s the silver lining, and it’s thrilling.” For those who may not have been able to travel to New York to attend the opera, video has also opened up access. “Honestly, it speaks to the power of the art form, the power of the creative community to bring solace and comfort in difficult times,” says Bongiovanni. “It really shows the power of technology to connect on a human level.”

Brightcove is incredibly proud to partner with the Met Opera to continue to connect with and grow its audiences everywhere through the powerful combination of music and video.

BRIGHTCOVE’S COMPREHENSIVE COMMITMENT TO VIDEO SECURITY

bsp-admin-1 on April 21, 2021

Security is a bit like your basic utilities like electricity, heat, and water: you don’t think about them much and maybe even take them for granted until they’re gone. Then you suddenly realize how critically important they are. In fact, piracy alone can have significant financial impacts. In the United States alone, GDP losses due to piracy estimate between $47 and $115 billion.

Security considerations impact everything we do at Brightcove. From product development to video management, our focus is to ensure that our customers are successful. From playback restrictions to data security, customers can uphold brand integrity and see a return on investment.

Whether content is for an internal or external audience, free or monetized, Brightcove keeps content and data secure while still allowing viewers to access it from any device, anywhere in the world. Our policies ensure that internal content remains confidential, external content is effectively monetized, and your brand maintains its integrity.

A COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH TO SECURITY

We make video readily available to anyone who should see it – and inaccessible to anyone who shouldn’t. But our approach to security is much more comprehensive than simply securing a video. At Brightcove, security is built into every step of our operations, from office security protocols and employee compliance certification to product development and content management.

Brightcove’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) video platform has a broad set of functions that help customers scale and manage their video content securely and reliably. Our data is hosted in a multi-tenant environment, but segregation is integrated at the customer level, as this image shows:

Comprehensive Security

For added security, the Brightcove platform also offers the option of storing master videos only in a region selected by a customer. For example, if a customer is tied to us-east-1, the content delivery network (CDN) located on the East coast of the United States, their masters wouldn’t leave us-east-1 – this is critical to ensuring compliance with regions that require data to stay within certain geographic areas.

MAKING MEDIA CONTENT MORE SECURE THAN EVER

Content creators need to be ever-vigilant about securing their content, from ingestion through playback. There are many levels of security that can be implemented such as restricting assets (the content itself), handling viewer access/permissions (implement rules around how audiences are able to view the content), and prevention of content piracy.

We recently introduced a new set of features called Brightcove Playback Restrictions, our most advanced security offer for the online video market, which address content security at every level.

PROXY RESTRICTIONS

These restrictions block playback from a variety of potentially risky IP scenarios:

  • ANONYMOUS: The IP address of the client is not available. This includes services that change location to beat DRM, TOR points, temporary proxies, and other masking services.
  • PUBLIC: Multiple users proxied from a location allowing public internet access.
  • CORPORATE: Generally considered harmless, but location can be a concern. You can set up rules around scenarios where multiple users are proxied through a central location or locations while sharing a single network-apparent IP address. Example: Employees could use the Boston or Tokyo VPN; multiple users would be using that same IP.
  • TRANSPARENT: The IP address of the client is available via HTTP headers, though the value is not necessarily reliable (e.g., it can be spoofed).

MID-STREAM RIGHTS CHECK

After the initial rights check is run at the start of video playback, another validation of the viewer’s credentials is run mid-stream. If the mid-stream check fails, the player will stop video playback. A great example of this is for a paid sporting event: if the team has a limit on stream concurrency and a paid viewer shares their login, a mid-stream check would determine the user no longer meets the conditions of the restrictions (i.e, more than one person has signed in with those credentials) and playback would stop.

STREAM CONCURRENCY

Limiting concurrent streams per user discourages viewers from sharing their credentials with friends who don’t have accounts. With concurrent stream limits, you define the number of video streams that a specific user can watch at any given time.

DEVICE REGISTRATION

Device registration occurs when a DRM license request is made. A unique ID is assigned to each device, and with each license request, the device limit is checked and enforced. An example of this is when a content provider grants a publisher permission to stream their content for a period of time, and their contractual agreement limits the number of devices associated with a single viewer to two. Once that limit is reached, if a user tries to view the content on a third device – say, a connected TV – the playback will be denied. This enables content owners to achieve their monetization objectives and minimize unauthorized access.

COMPLIANCE REQUIREMENTS

Brightcove follows a secure platform development model that includes enforcing encryption standards for all data in transit, employee compliance with documented data storage protocols, and user authentication when using the product.

We need to ensure that our customers and our company are completely protected when compliance requirements change. As part of our security strategy, we engage third-party security research firms to perform an annual vulnerability scan and penetration testing, including:

SARBANES-OXLEY (SOX) COMPLIANCE

Brightcove proactively obtains third-party audits to review controls, policies, and procedures. A review of a company’s internal controls is often the largest component of a SOX compliance audit. Internal controls include all IT assets, such as computers, network hardware, and other electronic equipment, that financial data passes through.

INDUSTRY CERTIFICATIONS

Digital Production Partnership (DPP): The DPP “Committed to Security” program enables broadcast and production suppliers to demonstrate their commitment to achieving security best practices. Privacy Shield: Privacy Shield certification reflects our pledge to our customers that we maintain adequate safeguards and comply with the Privacy Shield principles for transfer of European and Swiss personal data to the United States.

DATA SECURITY

Beyond playback, companies that offer robust analytics should provide equally comprehensive features to secure those data points. With Brightcove Audience Insights, we employ several security policies to protect our customers’ data.

SECURE PROTOCOLS

When retrieving data from a partner system or a customer’s datastore, we use secure protocols like HTTPS or SFTP. Once ingested, customer data is sequestered in an S3 bucket with limited access granted, even to our employees. After the data is harmonized, accessing the API or Brightcove Audience Insights requires a robust username and password that sets a temporary session cookie for each user.

NECESSARY DATA

We only pull data we need. Everything else is left behind in the customer or vendor system. In the event of an accident or malicious act, we cannot lose control of something we do not have.

PSEUDONYMIZATION

With the introduction of the GDPR standard in 2018, the concept of pseudonymization became a global policy for Brightcove. While we normally avoid collecting PII, there are a few use cases that require an email or IP address. Per GDPR, this data is immediately encrypted upon ingest using a one-way hash. The source data is deleted. There is no way back from the hashed result to the source data.

CLOUD STORAGE

Physical access to the data storage device is always a concern. This is where using a cloud-based service like AWS has its advantages. Access to the AWS data centers is strictly guarded and their architecture makes it near impossible to tell which data is on which server or storage array.

DEVELOPMENT AND DEPLOYMENT STANDARDS

Brightcove has established SDLC processes to ensure delivery of quality software services. We use an AGILE-based planning process, version control, automated testing, and automated deployment. Automation ensures not only reliable delivery but also an auditable process based solely on the resources noted in our version control system.

TEAM RESPONSIBILITY

Since we are only as strong as our weakest link, each teammate at Brightcove is reminded that they have a responsibility to speak up if they have a concern. It’s better to delay a release and even miss a deadline if a little extra time allows us to test a potential weakness and ensure our security standards remain strong.

THE RISING IMPORTANCE OF SECURITY FOR ENTERPRISES

When most people think about enhanced security, they usually envision some kind of media-related use case. But today, that’s simply too limited, and many enterprise organizations are seeing the need for enhanced security.

From confidential town hall meetings to big-budget virtual events, security plays a crucial role in safeguarding your brand and ensuring you maximize ROI.

Brand integrity is the lifeblood of an enterprise, and a breach of internal information or communications has a significant impact on a brand’s integrity. In one recent example, an unwelcome guest infiltrated the internal town hall of a well-known fast food brand. The announcements made at the town hall appeared in the next day’s news, causing the organization significant negative publicity and even exposing them to legal impact. The brand is now working with Brightcove to protect their internal communications from unauthorized access through user permissions and link-sharing prevention.

Events represent a major expense for companies, and securing a return on the significant sums invested in them depends on the ability to control who can attend. If you’re charging for admission or for access to premium content, it’s essential that every attendee pay the appropriate amount. No one should be able to share logins or links to content with people who haven’t paid for it. Brightcove security measures will enable you to maximize your ROI for every event.

PEACE OF MIND

In today’s world, it’s critical to be able to connect with everyone who is important to your business, but those connections must be completely secure. And Brightcove’s extensive industry-leading security measures gives you the confidence that they are.

With Brightcove, you can implement rules regarding how audiences are able to view your content and on how many devices. You can set concurrent stream limits and prevent link sharing. If piracy is a concern, you can ensure that viewers can’t copy content and share it with others. You’ll be in control, and you’ll never worry about security again. Not because it’s unimportant, but because you won’t have to.

Want to know more? See our security features page to stay up to date on our latest security efforts and see how Brightcove can help.

THE NEW WAY TO BUY VIRTUAL AND HYBRID EVENT TECHNOLOGY

bsp-admin-1 on April 20, 2021

A few years back a good friend of mine made a comment that stuck with me, something along the lines of “Where there is chaos, there is money to be made.” Granted, we were having fun with the idea of creating the perfect distraction for stealing a piece of artwork from a heavily-guarded museum, but the point is universally applicable. And nowhere was this statement more true than in the virtual event technology space during calendar year 2020.

As we are all painfully aware last year was—for the most part—uncontrolled madness for enterprises when it came to maintaining business continuity. I’m not going to drag everyone through yet another extended 2020 recap, because we all know what happened. But suffice it to say work at home mandates, travel restrictions, and last-minute event virtualizations not only opened up some previously tight budgets, but compressed video technology buying timelines from months into weeks or in some cases even days. And important things were missed, because this is always what happens when humans aren’t given adequate time to collect and process information.

We’ve all heard the virtual event horror stories, and many of you lived them first-hand. Some used a popular video conferencing application and were bombed by Internet trolls. Others brought a ‘workplace’ version of a social media app into their organization and put data privacy at risk. Many tried to run a live event using a popular B2C video app—only to have it completely melt down because the platform was never built to handle anything more than a small family reunion. And the rest cancelled their events altogether, making the decision that running a terribly-executed virtual event was worse than not running one at all.

The point is in 2020 buyers of virtual event technology lined up to pay for all kinds of half-baked, ill-fitting and mostly unproven virtual event solutions, because it was the only option they had. But the good news is this year will be different. As all of these one year contracts organizations signed come up for renewal in 2021, virtual event technology buyers are taking a more measured approach to evaluating needs. And most of them have already found there are more scalable, secure, and reliable solutions out there—some of which are easy to use and come with a ton of valuable features.

For example, did you know that organizations can run new product rollouts and customer events with the same platform that just won two Technology & Engineering Emmy® Awards? Are you aware the platform that delivered the first fully virtual South by Southwest® (SXSW®) Festival can also flawlessly execute your company’s next internal educational conference or external user summit? Brightcove customers knew this, and over the course of 2020 maintained business continuity by running thousands of virtual events on our award-winning video platform.

If you’ve already moved on from your 2020 platform to something you believe is better, take a minute and compare Brightcove to what you’re using now. Alternatively, if you’d like to speak with an expert or talk more about your virtual event use cases, please fill out this form on our website and someone will get back to you shortly.

5 THINGS TO KNOW BEFORE PLANNING A VIRTUAL OR HYBRID EVENT

bsp-admin-1 on April 15, 2021

I recently had the pleasure of participating in an event that was very much a sign of the interesting times we’re living in. Sponsored by CXOSync, moderated by Somi Arian, and featuring Wired Executive Editor Jeremy White in addition to yours truly, it was a virtual discussion of everything that goes into successful virtual and hybrid events.

Now that so many companies have seen for themselves the benefits of virtual events (or adding virtual components to in-person ones), there’s no doubt that virtual and hybrid events are here to stay. Here are a few things to keep in mind if you’re planning one for the year ahead.

1. AUDIENCES ARE EXPONENTIALLY LARGER – BE READY

If you’re used to drawing a thousand or so people to an in-person event, don’t be surprised if a virtual component attracts ten times that number. With virtual, travel time and expenses are no longer a barrier for attendees, so suddenly anyone who wants to attend, can. When you’re choosing a video platform for the virtual elements of your program, be sure to pick one that can handle your maximum likely audience. The last thing you want is for technical problems to ruin first-time attendees’ experience of your event.

2. LIVE OR PRERECORDED? THE ANSWER IS A LITTLE OF BOTH

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Live sessions have their own energy and excitement, but they present time zone challenges if you want to attract a global audience. Prerecorded gives you more control, but viewers miss the chance for interaction. A great middle ground is the simu-live format, where a prerecorded session is followed by a live Q&A with the speaker – it feels live (especially if the speaker wears the same clothes she wore when she was recorded!), but it’s much less demanding if the local time is 3:00 AM.

3. KEEP CONTENT SHORT

In person, a presentation of 45 minutes or even an hour is fine – but that’s way too long for a virtual one. The small screen just can’t hold someone’s attention the way a live speaker on a stage can. (Not to mention all the distractions that surround us at home.) Break things up into segments that are 20 to 25 minutes long. If an hour is allotted for a session, consider making it a 25-minute talk followed by a 15-minute panel discussion and 10 minutes of Q&A.

4. FLAWLESS PLAYBACK DOESN’T JUST HAPPEN

In an ideal world, everyone would be watching on the same device and with the same amount of bandwidth. In that case, a standard webinar platform would work just fine. But the real world offers no such predictability. People will be attending your event via any number of devices and under a wide range of bandwidths. And your platform has to be ready for that, or you will have a lot of frustrated attendees. A video player like Brightcove’s has adaptive streaming that will detect each viewer’s bandwidth environment and automatically switch to the best resolution with no buffering delays, which viewers hate. So your audience will have a flawless playback experience that won’t distract them from all the fantastic content at your event.

5. WITH GREAT DATA COMES GREAT INSIGHT

Virtual and in-person are two very different things, with their own strengths and weaknesses. The number one area where in-person can’t touch virtual is in the data-driven insights virtual events give you into what your audience cares about. Data can tell you what your viewers are engaging with in unexpected ways. Did someone rewind a portion of a VOD session and watch it again? That could be a powerful insight into their interests. Combine that information with the sessions they started vs. those they completed, what questions they asked in Q&A sessions, etc., and you can build a much clearer profile of this attendee than you could if they were at your event in person. Badge swipes just don’t tell you that much.

Last year, organizations found themselves scrambling to transition to virtual events, and as you might expect, results were mixed. In 2021, people are ahead of the curve and are planning virtual and hybrid events that maximize their considerable strengths. If you’d like to talk about what one could look like for your organization, I’m always here to help. By the end of this year we will begin seeing repeating hybrid events that are informed by the learnings from the last one, and the results will be amazing, I’m sure.

HOW THE CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY’S VIDEO STRATEGY PAID OFF

bsp-admin-1 on March 29, 2021

As Director of Digital Content for the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center, Trent Casey produces just about everything, from live stream broadcasts to a radio series with listeners from around the world. Long before any of that, Casey was an opera singer. Benefitting from his many talents, the Chamber Music Society has been able to realize the full potential of video to connect with audiences through the power of music.

Unlike some performing arts organizations, the Chamber Music Society has been live streaming performances since well before 2020. “I produced our very first live stream in 2010 with one single camera plugged into a laptop in our small 100-seat hall. That’s now grown to producing 25 to 30 live streams, along with recording and post-producing an additional 40 concerts, each season,” says Casey. “We were already heavily invested in streaming, but this past year, streaming has been a lifeline.”

Coincidentally enough, Casey was scheduled to produce a live stream concert on the very night New York City canceled all performances last March. And as the saying goes, the show must go on. “We went on with the stream; we just didn’t have an in-person audience.” Since then, with a video library of more than 1,000 performances, lectures, and masterclasses, Casey and his team have been able to “remix” their library of video content to create “new” concert performances.

WANT MORE ENGAGEMENT? ASK FOR IT.

Last year, the Chamber Music Society streamed a new concert every Sunday evening for 14 weeks. “These concerts were curated by our artistic directors. We had some short films in a few of them featuring our musicians and how they have been coping during this time. Then, each of those ended with a live Q&A,” explains Casey. Switching from pre-recorded video to a live audience Q&A also helped create a sense of connection. “When we asked for people to send in their questions throughout the broadcast, we got questions. And it’s helped us feel more connected with our digital audience than we ever have,” he says. “If you ask for engagement, you get more engagement. We’ve seen a significant increase in web traffic, and the live streams received more donations than they ever did before.”

A VIDEO PLATFORM IS A GLOBAL STAGE

After one full year of streaming performances, the Chamber Music Society has also gained new insights from Brightcove’s video analytics. After thinking about all of the potential metrics to track, Casey and his team decided to focus primarily on watch time. “We really boiled it down to, ‘How many people are coming to our website and watching our content?’ And the analytics for that kind of information is vital. People stay. The watch time is fantastic, and that’s the ultimate goal,” says Casey. Video analytics have also pinpointed where people are watching from to show the Chamber Music Society’s newfound global reach. “Others in the organization are understanding that video allows us to be global. We’re not just restricted to the audience that can come to our halls in New York City. People can watch us from anywhere at any time. I have made that case internally before, but now, it’s just much more obvious.”

LIVE AND DIGITAL WORK BEST IN CONCERT

Like all performing arts organizations, the Chamber Music Society is anxiously awaiting the day when live performances in the concert hall can resume. “We will do live again. It’s not a question of if; it’s a question of when, but we’re ready,” says Casey. But this past year has given him and his team the opportunity to rethink how they’ll present future chamber music performances. “In the past, our streams were just one-to-one analogs of the in-hall experience,” he says, “Streaming this past year has allowed us to supplement the musical performances with introductions from the artist or our assistant directors, to add a little more context around the performance itself. We didn’t necessarily do that in the past. Once we get back into the concert hall and start doing live performance again, I hope it gives us the opportunity to reconsider how we are presenting these digital concerts to make them digital-native and something much more unique and true to the platform.”

To all of us at Brightcove and to music lovers around the world, that sounds beautiful.

HYBRID EVENTS: CONVERSATION WITH HARTMANN STUDIOS’ CANDICE BOAZ

bsp-admin-1 on March 29, 2021

A DISCUSSION ABOUT HYBRID EVENTS, CONTENT BURSTS, AND NEW “SMART STAGE” TECHNOLOGY

Earlier this week, I had the chance to catch up with Candice Boaz at Hartmann Studios, one of Brightcove’s event production partners. I wanted to get Candice’s take on how virtual events will continue to evolve, and learn how the Hartmann Studios team is helping to move their clients one step closer to hybrid events.

Check out our conversation below to learn more.

NICK: Candice, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me. Why don’t we start by having you tell our readers a little bit about yourself and Hartmann Studios.

CANDICE: Great, thanks Nick. I’m Candice Boaz and I lead account development here at Hartmann Studios. We’ve been in the events industry for more than 35 years now and started producing events with significant and complex virtual components well before 2020, when our clients were forced to pivot their in-person events to virtual. We offer end-to-end production services, everything from strategy to execution, for companies like Oracle, Samsung, and The Home Depot. What I love most about the events industry is that there’s alway some sort of new creative challenge to tackle.

NICK: …and let’s be honest, 2020 was full of challenges and many lessons learned! I’m always curious to hear what new things our partners are learning and the attendee engagement strategies that are working. Because at this point, we all know screen fatigue is real. How does Hartmann Studios tackle this?

CANDICE: You’re absolutely right, and I will tell you that we are always testing and learning and optimizing for this. What it really all boils down to is effective agenda planning and short bursts of information.

One of the benefits of in-person events is that you have a captive audience over a finite period of time. With a virtual event, this couldn’t be further from the truth, and your audience can lose interest a lot sooner.

At Hartmann Studios, we approach agenda planning and building for virtual events as ‘total time.’ The idea is that you should be delivering short bursts of compelling content, and then give your audience time to internalize—or act as a group—on the information while away from their screens, before delivering the next burst of messaging.

For example, The Climate Reality Project’s global virtual event that Brightcove and Hartmann Studios collaborated on, we made the decision to turn their typical 3-day intensive in-person training and spread it out over the course of 9 days with a few hours of targeted video programming each day so we didn’t exhaust people through the process.

NICK: “Content bursts.” I love that. You are speaking my language. We’ve been hearing more and more requests from our customers who are already planning for hybrid events. What is Hartmann’s philosophy or approach when it comes to planning for these?

CANDICE: It’s a great question, and one we often get asked as well. At Hartmann Studios, we believe memorable and impactful events – virtual and hybrid – must always include 5 key elements:

1. Design a highly engaging experience for the audience and presenters

2. Create opportunities for people to make authentic, meaningful connections

3. Infuse personalized touches that make the audience feel like active participants

4. Develop a vision for repurposing content in a meaningful way to drive ROI beyond the event itself

5. Employ a solid measurement plan—virtual events provide rich analytics with some careful pre-planning

The biggest thing to remember for a hybrid event that is often overlooked is that you are working with two different audiences – people at home and people in the room – and the biggest challenge is to make them feel like they’re one audience.

NICK: I know the Hartmann Studios team is working on some exciting new technology that will help bring hybrid events to fruition. What can you share with us?

CANDICE: Yes, absolutely. I think the feeling that comes from being face-to-face with a live audience is truly something special, and it drives our team to constantly raise the bar for engagement, entertainment, and connection in the virtual events and conferences we produce. We are thrilled to finally be able to share our latest Smart Stage technology, which … well, I think the video says it all!

NICK: It’s so exciting. And I think we’re really starting to see that as expectations for these events get higher and higher, video is enabling limitless possibilities.

CANDICE: Yes, and high-quality, fail-safe video is essential and one of the many reasons we often recommend Brightcove to our clients. One of the most crucial aspects of any virtual event and conference is the technology that’s distributing our client’s content, which ultimately affects the production decisions we need to make. The foundational event technology has to integrate well with other technologies, and Brightcove does just that.

NICK: Candice, anything else to add on hybrid events or what’s happening over at Hartmann Studios?

CANDICE: One tip I will leave your readers with is this: virtual events should really begin before the scheduled programming. For example, what content can you share with registered attendees before the event that will get them excited? Better yet, how can you give people a head start to connect with each other? Try hosting a pre-program gathering where the host and perhaps one of the speakers can do an informal session to prep attendees on what to expect, how to get the most out of the event, and gather questions from attendees to inform some of your content. I think it’s our responsibility as event professionals and program producers to innovate and adapt to help foster authentic human connection. It’s really all about bringing people together and making them feel connected to others during a time when people need it most.

If you’re planning a virtual or hybrid event, we’d love to help. Get in touch with us here.

MAXIMIZING VIDEO FOR EXTERNAL GOVERNMENT COMMUNICATIONS

bsp-admin-1 on March 25, 2021

USING VIDEO FOR EXTERNAL GOVERNMENT COMMUNICATIONS TO CONNECT TO THE COMMUNITY

Recent disruptions in our community have reminded us how important external government communications are for building unity and keeping constituencies informed. At home and across the globe, communities have experienced challenges that require fast and ongoing support from government, so it is crucial that our communications instill confidence and trust.

Citizen demand for timely public sector messages has led to a significant increase in the use of video. Livestreaming and video on demand have both been used by government communications to share important information with the community at large. Eliminating the need to drip feed information down through internal departments, video allows government teams to deliver a consistent message directly to citizens, particularly in situations that require frequent updates.

For the NSW (New South Wales) Department of Education in Australia, video played an increasingly critical role in their communications strategy in 2020. Using video to livestream important messages to 2,200 schools and the wider school community to keep them up to date, the department was able to deliver information to all staff, parents, and students quickly and accurately.

And for schools across NSW, the “Schools Video” initiative has made video a central component of how they tell their own stories and those of their students. Leveraging user-generated content created by students and staff, schools across the state can tell authentic stories and share experiences by creating video content and distributing it via their website, social, and internal channels.

Other government agencies are using video to create greater transparency for official activities, with many local, state, and federal departments livestreaming meetings, posting video on their social media channels, and relying on it for community outreach.

With the future of government focused on putting constituents first and delivering services that are easily accessible across all the platforms in common use, now is the time for public sector agencies to embrace video as a cornerstone of effective communications with the people they serve.