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Everyday Software: Workshop Webcasting
by Michael C. Gilbert, November 2004
This is the second in a series of articles on software that has found its way into common use in my day to day work. The first piece was email. Today, I'm tackling something a little less prosaic: webcasting.
I wouldn't normally call webcasting tools "everyday software" except that, in preparation for a series of online briefings last week, these tools have occupied my attention every day for the last month. And now that the tools are in place, I can imagine using them often.
The two core technologies that we're using are Quicktime and instant messaging. The former is the main broadcast channel and the latter is the main channel for getting feedback from students. In the following workflow diagram, the content flows out over Quicktime on the right hand side, and feedback flows back in from the students, to a producer and then to me, the instructor, on the left hand side.
(Click on image for larger version)
This diagram is descriptive. It illustrates how we actually managed our workflow for our recent online Professional Briefings on Frictionless Fundraising. If I were being prescriptive, I would offer a different diagram. It might show greater control by the producer and more sensitive feedback mechanisms. But for this article, I want to give you an idea of how we actually did this, because it worked remarkably well.
Quicktime Player and AIM
Let's start from the perspective of the students in our briefings.
We ask students to use the free Quicktime Player to receive the video and audio portions of the presentation. On the day of the workshop, we send out a couple of URLs. One is a test stream and the other is the live stream, which only becomes active a few minutes before the workshop begins. Quicktime Player is a full featured media player that allows the user to adjust the video size to help organize their screen and to save snapshots of particularly useful slides or pictures. It's available for all major platforms.
Although we'll probably move to hosting our own server (using open source and open protocol software) at some point, for now we are asking each student to have an AOL Instant Messager ID, which are available for free, and a chat client, for which there are a number of free options covering all major operating systems. AIM, which we recommended to students who weren't already familiar with chat clients, is available for both Mac and PC. Our producer was using Adium, which is an open source client, is available for Mac and PC. And I was using Apple's iChat client. In our screenshot, we show the client that AOL distributes, which includes advertising. The student's chat client gives them direct access to the producer of the webcast, who passes on questions and comments to me.
Quicktime Streaming Server
Quicktime Streaming Server is an elegant streaming solution that comes in two flavors. For ease of administration, there is the version that is shipped with Mac OS X Server. For ease on the budget, there is the free and open source Darwin Streaming Server. These are both built on the same technology, with support for a range of state-of-the-art features, and the latest digital media standards.
The streaming server functions as a kind of amplifier. It takes a single inbound stream, in my case coming from my laptop, and then multicasts that stream out to each person who is watching it through Quicktime Player.
Both versions of the streaming server can be administered over a web interface, but we used a remote administration client called Server Admin. The administrative interface allows access to the settings and the logs, as well as real time information about users and bandwidth.
Wirecast
In order to broadcast, you need more than an antenna and a camera. You need something that sits in between those two, manages your live content, and sends it to the antenna. In our scenario, the antenna is the streaming server. The software that we used to manage the show itself and send the finished signal to the server is called Wirecast from Vara Software.
We could have used a free application from Apple Computer called Quicktime Broadcaster and for a simple webcast it would have been just fine. But the production oriented feature set of Wirecast makes it well worth using a commercial tool.
Wirecast enabled us to queue up the next media side by side with the media that was being broadcast. Media could consist of stored movies, live video and audio, slides from presentation applications (in my case that's Keynote), streaming images from my desktop, and images of any kind. Any of these individual media files or streams could have foreground and background layers, as well as titles, which could be prepared in advance or on the fly. Wirecast, along with the mute button on my microphone, made me feel like we were in complete control.
New Directions
Aside from the enormous improvements that I need to make as an online television personality, there are a handful of technical and workflow changes I would consider for the next time around.
I want to experiment with a great little piece of software called Desktastic. It creates an invisible layer above your applications on which you can write, rather like writing on your screen with a dry erase marker. I'm a visual thinker and I get a lot of value out of the use of a white board during conference workshops. This is what it looks like:
I want to experiment with the role of the Producer. We might hand over the control of the Wirecast software to the Producer and have the Instructor assume more direct responsibility for reading messages that come in from chat. There will be some interesting challenges if the volume gets too large, of course.
I want to set up our own messaging server, using the Jabber framework. Jabber is an open platform with open source implementations on both the server and the client end. I would prefer to not be dependent upon a closed system and I have profound concerns about the privacy of my students. I can address both of these issues by controlling the server.
Finally, I want to enrich the channels of feedback that come from our students. In a face to face workshop, there are hundreds of little clues that an instructor gets, about whether people are paying attention, whether they understand, and when a particular topic is going over well. With control over the messaging technology, there is an opportunity for us to explore little signals, perhaps real time single click messages, that students can use to give an instructor that invaluable feedback that is missing from broadcasting blind.
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