by Michael Doyle, Executive Director of the Virtual Edge Institute
In 2012, Cisco Live Australia captured 35 sessions with video, audio and slides. In 2013, they stepped up the program and captured 160 sessions – 100% of the content being delivered at the physical event. Cisco Live Mexico and London also captured 100%.
“That was always our stretch goal, even many years ago,” says Dan Gerson, Cisco Live 365 Content Manager. “We always wanted to capture all this great content. It was just always cost- prohibitive in the past.”
Using Cisco technology, the team built a remote video capture system that allowed just two people to monitor, make adjustments and capture 18 rooms simultaneously. In the past, this same solution would have required at least one person per room manning the cameras and equipment. With the new solution, the camera is set at the back of each room and controlled in a remote monitoring room. The technician can pan, tilt or zoom the camera, and also listen to the audio feed or view slides.
Each room is connected to a network using Cisco’s Telepresence infrastructure (one server can record up to ten rooms). C-Series codecs are deployed in each room with the cameras. No additional lighting was used as the cameras are good in low light. (Pay a little more for better cameras and save on lighting.)
“The system is a typical video conferencing unit that you’ll find in video-conference rooms in any office,” notes Gerson. “A 12x HD camera connects to a codec (an encoding device) that we have mounted on what looks like a very tall tripod at the back of the room. We work with the AV company to hand off an audio-feed straight from their board. We also get a feed from the presenter’s laptop – the same feed that goes to the projector in the room. That way, anything the presenter displays, we capture.”
How much editing is done to the captured content? “We’re really just editing tops and tails (beginnings and ends), so each session, on average, takes a minute and a half to two minutes to edit, depending on how fast the laptop is,” explains Gerson.
For live streaming – keynotes and general sessions only – Cisco uses Ustream so it can embed the live-streamed event into as many other websites as possible. Cisco’s a big believer in syndicating content to get maximum exposure.
“The back-end of our content delivery network is on Amazon Web Services,” explains Quang-Huy Nguyen, Marketing Program Manager, Cisco Live 365. “We use two of their offerings – S3, which is the storage solution, and Amazon Cloudfront, which is the content delivery network. This ensures that our content is accessible by everyone globally. Our audience is all over the world, and we want to ensure that when they’re watching these videos, they have an excellent experience. All the content is in Cisco Live 365. This is a very valuable resource, especially for folks who can’t attend an event, and for those who do, but want to see the sessions they missed.”
One of the reasons Cisco built its own Cisco Live 365 platform was to allow search engines such as Google to index its content. Registration for the site is “moved back” until someone wants to actually watch a video. Anyone can go into the system, search and find content.
But a login box appears when you click to play a video. This allows search engines to access all the content except the videos themselves. Driving more traffic to the site, and getting more people to view its content is what it’s all about for Cisco Live.
Not only does this whole process generate more interest in Cisco technology and provide a powerful customer experience, it also increases in-person attendance as their online attendance grows.
Michael Doyle is the founder and Executive Director of the Virtual Edge Institute, an industry organization dedicated to advancing the development and adoption of digital event and meeting technology and best practices for collaboration, marketing and learning. He is a 20-year veteran of trade shows, magazines and online publishing with extensive marketing, content and business development experience.
Doyle is a frequent speaker and blogger on topics related to the use of digital technologies for business at events such as: the Virtual Edge Summit, PCMA’s Convening Leaders, Event Solutions, Life Sciences Meeting Management Forum, IAEE, MPI, ASAE, CCCA, IMEX, Measurement Summit, Society of Government Meeting Professionals, and Meeting Technology Summit.
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