Lessons learned from Dublin Open Coffee live video stream

Eoghan McCabe, Paul Campbell and Olivier Ansaldi were among the many faces I recognized at today OpenCoffee Club in Dublin's Morrison Hotel from where the participants kindly streamed a live video feed using Ustream.tv.

Having been in the thick of the action (though thankfully out of camera) at Limerick OpenCoffee Club last week, when Conn O'Muineachain filmed the session from the AbsoluteHotel.com, it was great this time to sit back and take it all in as it was happening.

At first the signs were ominous. I felt every bit of my physical 150 miles away from the conversation as I gazed out through the laptop mounted camera, perched somewhere in front of the fragmented group of attendees. I could only catch snippets of conversation among the three of four people in the immediate foreground, a few of whom were out of shot.

But, about a half an hour into the session things started to change dramatically. As Niall Larkin observed, Dublin OpenCoffee organically found focus as a panel discussion among those physically present while taking questions from the remote viewers.

I think this is a very important point to remember for future Ustreaming of OpenCoffee Clubs. In fact here's how I would wrap that observation in a few action points -

1. Use the first half of OpenCoffee Club for meet and greet - individual chat among those physically present. Do not turn the camera on during this as it interferes with the informal nature of the chit-chat and makes some people uncomfortable
2. During the 2nd half get participants who are not camera shy to huddle around the camera/mic and engage in round-table discussion between themselves and with the remote viewers, taking questions from the Ustream chat room as well as holding their own conversations. The round-table format is very important. Because of lack of directional queues it is much easier for remote viewers to follow the conversation when people aren't talking over each other. Not that people should be too conscious of this proviso either - we don't want a stilted conversation. But it's worth adhering to if possible.
   
3. Ignore the trolls!! (ie. encourage the remote viewers to login and ignore some of the trollish questions asked by the odd inquisitive and anonymous onlooker).
4. Having said that do pay attention to the chat room and the questions being asked. Try to engage the panel in answering them if possible.
   

In fact I felt the chat room added a lot to the session today. Not everyone logged in but at various points people like Ken McGuire, Conn O'Muineachain, Conor O'Neill, Aidan Finn, Fergus Burns and Niall Larkin were asking great questions.

Conor made the point that interviews are the way to go but I think that was before the more focussed second half of the session got underway. And, as Ken McGuire said, while the interview with the Collison brothers in Limerick gave great focus to the session, fly-on-the-wall coverage is still welcome. To add to that Adian Finn said it's good to see experimentation and we can all learn from it what works and doesn't work.

Aidan was also one of the people who thought today's introductions (to the attendees) were good but all too brief. So another suggestion I might make is for a format somewhere between the informal round-table of today and the formal 'interview' format last week in Limerick. That is, a 5 minute informal Q&A session with anybody in the group willing to participate.

And when I say 'willing' I mean willing! Because, another big lesson for me today is that some people are comfortable on camera and some (like me) are not. And forcing a camera in front of the latter group disrupts the flow for those physically present. Aidan wondered if the live broadcast was affecting the participants and felt he'd be a lot more guarded about what he'd say in the knowledge that it was being broadcast. Conn made a similar point - while he intends recording future OCCs in Cork he doesn't want to interfere with the format they've established there.

Anyway, these are just my personal observations and should be taken with a grain of salt as I really don't know much about video production, etc. All in all I thought today's session was another wonderful success and I eagerly look forward to tuning in next time.


Technorati Tags: dublin, opencoffe, occ, ustream, live video

Comments

[Michael Flanagan]

Good post; I'd agree with pretty much all of it.

I very much like the idea of not streaming the entire event. While it's great to have participation from those not physically present, and the idea of streaming is fun in itself, it can certainly make people a little uncomfortable or apprehensive not really knowing who's listening in. The half and half idea sounds great to me.

[Aidan Finn]

Good analysis James. I've already posted my thoughts on Eoghan's post and I agree with all the points you've made.

http://www.eoghanmccabe.com/naive-by-design/opencoffee-club-dublin-live/#comment-10718

[Eoghan McCabe]

Thanks for the feedback, James. Very useful.

I only turned on the camera to see if it would work! When it was streaming, I didn't really know what to do with it. One big problem was the fact that it's attached to my laptop, so was hard to manoeuvre. Another problem was the small size of the table and the group; I wanted to get closer to the action but without pointing the camera at anyone in particular, making them nervous. I was very aware that the broadcast at that point would be close to garbage.

When we saw there was a decent amount of viewers, the realisation caused us to give the camera (and more importantly, the audience) some real recognition. That's what propelled the interaction I think.

I for one felt a little uncomfortable about being broadcast. I think we all got used to it after a while, but I was constantly reviewing what I just said in my mind. It sounds silly. I hope I didn't force the camera in the face of anyone that really didn't want to be part of it.

I wouldn't worry too much about the trolls; you get that everywhere. I would like to know what was said though... And by who! :-) It's a pity the chat session isn't saved.

The most important take-home for me was the hint (more like slap in the face) that something very different, powerful, emotive, scary and game-changing happened today (and at Limerick OCC) that must be seized upon and tried again. It's all an experiment at this point; that goes some way to excuse the poor "first-half" I hope. But I'm extremely excited about the prospect of bridging the gaps between Cork, Limerick, Galway, Dublin and elsewhere and making more irrelevant that thing called geography.

Now let's see how Cork get on tomorrow! ;-)

[James Corbett]

Thanks lads. It's interesting to see that, even after only two sessions, there's a consensus emerging towards what works and doesn't work (not that any of us are necessarily right!! ;-)

Eoghan I think it worked out wonderfully well in the second half, especially considering it was an ad-hoc affair. You make great points about the camera and size of screen etc, and I'm really looking forward to us trying some kind of link up between the OCCs at some stage.

Over to Cork :-)

[Damien Mulley]

There could be a business opportunity to feed that kind of paint drying crap into Guantanamo.

[Michael Kiely]

I agree with Damien - Not nearly enough special effects ;)