As part of the college’s ongoing commitment to embrace new technologies in-line with the Online Content Strategy announced at the 2016 Away Day, we have introduced live streaming of events. This is the live broadcast of video over the internet direct to social media via a portable device such as a mobile phone or tablet. There are a number of apps and sites that will allow the streaming of live events, and for our purposes we are currently using Periscope, which when live sends a link automatically to the college twitter page and viewed directly in the app / on the site and can also be re-tweeted as the event goes on.

We have trialled the use of the service on two of our inaugural lectures recently and have found that this served to effectively double the numbers viewing the event, and in the case of the first lecture this increased further thanks to the service’s replay feature which allows the video of the stream to remain viewable for the next few days after broadcast.

As a proof of concept we have been very happy with the results and will be rolling this out for more events in the future.

As the use of live streaming increases across the college we will look at the possibility of multi-channel streaming – this would involve the use of two devices streaming video through two different platforms, such as Periscope and YouTube Live. this will allow us to reach bigger potential audiences and with prior coordination between departments can make sure college events are shared across the main university accounts, as well as those belonging to the college.

If you would like us to live stream your event, please contact us via the about the team page, but before you do please keep the following in mind:

• While the video is suitable for online viewing the quality is not good enough for editing, therefore if you’d also like a lasting professional quality video to be uploaded to the university’s YouTube channel then please let us know and we will also bring the equipment for this.
• If your event contains any material that is of a sensitive nature, unpublished data, or may otherwise feature persons who do not give consent to be live streamed, please be aware that live streaming may not be practical as a result and conventional filming may be better.
• The main speaker will need to be mic’d up so if there will be more than one speaker let us know in advance so we can bring the correct microphones.
• This service is unsuitable for any location that does not have a stable WiFi connection – outdoor events, none-university locations may therefore be a problem unless there is a stable internet connection available.