Attendees blogging during an event

There are plenty of online tools to make the live coverage of your conference over the internet. In this article I have summarized the most useful, powerful and easier to use ones.

The global availability of broadband and a bunch of web 2.0 services have made the live transmission of an event a low cost (if not free) and rather easy activity. In particular the power balance has changed: in the past, only the organizer could broadcast what was going on during the conference but nowadays almost anyone with a mobile phone or laptop+internet connection can do so.

The best way to proceed is for the organizer to produce its own flux of information plus encouraging the attendees to do the same on their own, providing them with free wi-fi internet access. The only risk is that if you produce a poor event, the world will know it immediately from the activity produced by your attendees… anyway you cannot hide, so the best thing is to give free access and try to do your best to organize a remarkable event.

Define your tag

Independently of which tools you or your audience will be using, it is very important that you define the official tag (also known as hashtag) of the event and that you communicate it to everyone, prior, during and after the conference. This will allow you to easily track the conversations that talk about you.

A tag is a short keyword that should represent the name of your conference. I also advice you to include in the tag the year the event is taking place in. Try to keep the tag as short  as possible (but still representative) to save characters in services like Twitter, that only allows a limited number of characters (140) for each message.

Example: if your event is called “Green Business 2009” your tag could be something like “greenbiz09”, often represented as #greenbiz09, or “gbiz09”. The “#” tells programs like Twitter that this is your tag and makes it easier to track the conversation through a search engine.

Micro-blogging

Micro-blogging services are amongst the most popular ones today. The content consists of several short messages that describe what is going on at the conference, usually in real time.

Cover it Live (www.coveritlive.com)

Cover-it-live is a very powerful online application which is being used by big and small companies to transmit live events like conferences, sports matches, political announcements, etc.

Advantages

• Cover-it-live works as a widget you can embed in your website or blog and does not require to download an application.
• It allows multiple users to input information which can consist of text, images, videos and files to download.
• The information is displayed as a chronological feed that updates itself without needing to refresh the browser.
• The system allows comments by followers, which can be moderated by the owners of the feed.
• Once the live coverage is finished, Cover-it-live saves all the content and allows you to display it so that users can still watch it as a documentation of what happened.

Cost: free for now . In the future it will offer a premium version will allow some interface personalization, etc.

Scribble Live (www.scribblelive.com)

Similar in function to Cover it Live, it offers some advantages. I haven’t personally tried it yet but have seen it in use by big players like TechCrunch and others.

Advantages (apart from the ones shared with Cover it live)

• Website integration which means that  you can cross-post to your Wordpress Blog, or embed an iFrame into any web page, create a customized html at the end of your event and paste it into your site. Their system is optimized so that  the content lives on your website and it can be indexed by all search engines, which means more traffic for you.
• Direct integration to several services like Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, etc
• Translation tool to automatically translate your content into many other languages.

Cost: it is free but also offers an Enterprise solution.

Twitter (www.twitter.com)

Probably one of the most talked about services, Twitter allows you to produce short messages of 140 characters, or “Twits”.

Advantages

Twitter logo

• Inputs can be written through Twitter’s web interface or through dozens of third party applications from your computer (like Twhirl or Seesmic Desktop) or internet enabled mobile phone.
• Your followers on Twitter automatically get updates from your messages and can reply or send direct messages to you.
• Twitter is rather ubiquitous right now and you will find that during events the most of the content published through this service comes from the audience, so it is very useful to see in real time what they are saying and take that as feedback to improve or change things on the go.
• Connecting your Twitter account to your Facebook or FriendFeed accounts (or others too) is very easy and it allows you to reach your followers on those services too.
• Links to images can also be published on Twitter through third party services like Twitpic and many others.
• Powerful search tool.

Cost: Twitter is free!

FriendFeed (www.friendfeed.com)

FriendFeed produces a real time feed of information directly through its web interface by aggregating your other social networking sources (like Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, del.icio.us, etc).

Advantages

• FriendFeed creates a unique information feed from most of your online sources, acting as an aggregator. It allows you to follow what goes online in many different social networks through a central web interface.
• This service, opposed to Twitter, fosters the creation of conversations by allowing comments under each source of information. It empowers your direct contacts and their contacts to participate, extending the reach of your inputs.
• Groups: you can create a group (previously know as “rooms”) and invite all your contacts and other people (for example by promoting your FriendFeed group on the conference’s website) to concentrate all the talks and inputs related to your event. This allows you and other people to follow a dedicate feed that aggregates the information produced by different sources/people in just one place.

Cost: FriendFeed is free too!

Video Streaming

Video online streaming allows you (but not only) to broadcast what’s going on during your conference with quality that ranges from mediocre to high definition, depending on the service used and your broadband internet quality.

There are many services to broadcast live and I selected three of the most popular and powerful ones.

Livestream (www.livestream.com)

Probably one of the most powerful streaming services, the recently renamed Livestream (previously known as Mogulus) is a very versatile tool that may not only allows live video broadcasting but also offers professional editing and live commenting & interaction instruments.

Advantages

• Livestream is easy to setup and has a huge array of options to personalize your transmission. It’s up to you to decide which features to use.
• You can control more than one source of video, which allows you to use different cameras and other sources to create a single video stream.
• You can create your own TV like channel with a defined url (like “www.livestream.com/my-event-name”) to transmit all your events so that you don’t need to create a different web address each time.
• You can embed a widget with your video streaming in your own website.
• Livestream provides a chat window where watchers can comment and interact with the vide producer and between themselves.
• You can use the Livestream website to promote your videos.
• The quality of the service is related to the quality of your internet connection but you can obtain decent enough quality with a normal internet service.

Cost: the basic service is free but you can also pay to activate professional features and have more options to personalize your channel.

UStream (www.ustream.tv)

Basically it is similar to Livestream but IMHO a bit less powerful. Used to broadcast many different kinds of events.

Cost: the service is free to use.

Qik (www.qik.com)

The main characteristic of Qik is that you can use it through your mobile phone, which means that anyone with an internet enabled phone with a camera can become a video source. Quality varies depending on the internet service used but in general Qik is very easy to use and comes as a default application with many mobiles (like the new Nokia N97) or as a downloadable application (for iPhone and others).

Advantages: simple and easy to set up and use, you can start video broadcasting wherever you are using your mobile phone.

Cost: free.

Do you use any other online tools to cover your conference? Please share them with us!

Larry Lessig's Faceroll photo @ iSummit '08

Making a “faceroll” consists in documenting through photos the faces of the attendees to a conference with the scope of having a visual archive for you (the organizer) and the other participants.

You can achieve this goal through many ways depending on the kind of conference, venue and resources available. The one I describe is probably the most simple and direct one using resources widely available and of course you can make it however you like. The main aim here is to get everyone’s image and name associated and published online in a simple way.

You will need:

• a digital camera and a photographer (doesn’t have to be a pro)
• a dedicated area for the faceroll
• a flickr account to upload the photos
• the conference website/blog to show the photos
• a slideware software (like PowerPoint or Keynote)

How to make the faceroll for your conference:

1. Decide in which part of your website/blog you are going to publish the faceroll and if it is going to be visible to everyone or only to the event’s attendees (I suggest to make it open to everyone)
2. Add the necessary code to show the photos that you will later upload, filtering by a specific tag (like “event-name-faceroll”). In this example i suggest using the Flickr badge in HTML format, that will randomly change the photos within the selected tag each time the page is reloaded
3. Designate an area where you’re going to take the pictures. Usually it is better to place it adjacent to the registration area, where participants will pick up their badges. It is better to have a clear and neutral background and adequate lighting (natural/artificial)
4. When the registration staff gives the badge to the attendees, they should direct the latter to the faceroll area. It works better to have a person dedicated to “capturing” people after they pick up their badge or it can be the photographer to do so. In my experience the best thing is to have 2 people with cameras, so that they both “capture” people and take photos simultaneously, avoiding forming a long waiting line
5. It is better to shoot the photo directly in Jpeg format (compared to Raw), so that it can be uploaded directly without any retouching or processing
6. Ask people to hold their badge VERY close to their face and be sure that the his name is readable in the photo (see examples). At first people are a bit wary as they are not sure what the photo is going to be used for. Gently explain that it is for documenting the attendees of the event, allowing them all to see who is participating, and that it will be published on the conference’s website/blog
7. In most conferences the arrival of participants is concentrated in small periods of time, so you should work to have the maximum throughput of participants photographed
8. After the registration phase is over, immediately upload the photos as a batch to flickr and tag them with a unique tag (use the same tag defined in point 2). This will allow you to retrieve the photos of the faceroll automatically
9. The photo of each participant should be titled with name, surname and company
10. Once pictures have been uploaded and tagged, make them public and publish the code on your website/blog to show them online

Most probably you won’t be able to get everyone’s photo during the registration phase so now you have to promote the existing faceroll to invite the rest of the audience to take part in it. At first, some persons are wary of what is going to happen with their image so they are reluctant to have a picture taken. After they see the effective use of it, they immediately see the potential and their ego is boosted.

There are several ways of promoting the faceroll during the conference. The one that I’ve found most successful is to have the chairman of the event explain that the faceroll lets you see who else is there with you and while he is doing so project on the screens some photos. They could be incorporated on a PowerPoint slide (see example) or it could be a view of your website indicating the area where the photos appear. Unless you work on the porn industry, everyone will want to showcase themselves to say that “I was there“. Remember to indicate the area where people can have their photo taken and make sure the photographer is there at the designated time, e.g. during coffee breaks.

Sample slide to promote the faceroll inside the conference room (photo of Joi Ito @ iSummit '08)

During idle times, show on the screens of the conference room a random selection of photos&names or your website with rotating images, as if it were a screen saver.

Your business intelligence and commercial staff will be the first guys to rejoice with the fact of having an accurate faceroll, as it tells them who effectively participated. Attendees will also be happy to see their faces published.

Follows an example of Flickr badge with two photos that rotate each time you refresh this page and an screen capture of the iSummit 2008 homepage that shows how they showed the faceroll of the event.

iSummit 2008 homepage with faceroll highlited

Do you make a faceroll during your conference? Share your method here please…

All the pictures shown in this article were taken by me (except mine taken by Kiruba Shankar) during the iCommons iSummit 2008 in Sapporo, Japan.

When it comes to documenting your event through photography (together with video the most powerful instruments) a question I get very often is how to recruit the right photographer. Many variables are involved, from getting a professional one to having a lot of amateurs around to capture different moments and points of view. In any case one of the most significant factors is the creation of a storyboard.

These are the main aspects to consider:

Payed or free?

Depending on your budget the first thing to decide is if you are going to pay for a professional photographer or you’ll rely on an amateur or a volunteer. The main point from a professional is that often (but not always) it guarantees good quality results, specially if she is experienced in that sector and will have high quality equipment. An amateur might be cheaper and volunteers for free and even satisfy your needs. A usual drawback is that amateurs might have less experience covering events like yours (spotting the right scene) or lack the necessary equipment to do it right (high quality glass, a fast lens, the right telephoto or wide angle, etc). With volunteers the limit might be that they don’t do what you want or quality is not enough.

Number of photographers required?

A simple conference with action happening all in one place can be easily covered by one photographer, but when action takes place in different areas simultaneously it will be hard to capture all the images that you want. Apart of the easy alternative of paying for an extra one, I often suggest to have just one official photographer and other satellites that can be amateurs (cheaper/free) or volunteers (free). It is always good to have the official photographer coordinating the satellites to assure that you don’t miss any shot or you can do the briefing yourself, assigning specific tasks (see Storyboard below).

Where to look for the photographer?

If I don’t have a trusted photographer available (ask to friends, colleagues or business partners), I usually ask the venue where the conference will take place to suggest one. The advantage is that she will know the work environment well. A usual drawback of this practice is that the venue might apply a markup on the cost.

Same thing applies to amateurs and for volunteers: the best way to find someone that will do it for free and will be involved in the work is to look for people interested in the contents of your event and make them part of the team. If your conference has an admission fee, make it free for the volunteer in exchange for his documentation work. Make clear from the beginning the kind of output you expect.

Storyboard

This is the most important factor for obtaining the photos you want (apart from the photographer’s ability). A storyboard is a list of all the scenes that you want to capture, often including a detailed agenda of the events and where they will happen. The photographer will use this as a checklist to make his work.

If you organize many events, doing a good storyboard once will save you a lot of time in the future and will guarantee better results.

In the storyboard you should describe:

• all the events and situations you want to obtain: photos of the speakers, the conference room, the audience, the networking area, banners and signage, etc
• time and location of each event/situation
• the kind of photos you want: panoramic, close ups, etc
• add notes specifying the format, minimum resolution, desired layout, etc
• add sample images that exemplify what you expect (if you don’t have any, choose photos you like from the web, your competitors, etc)

Sample Storyboard

9.00 AM – Event opening
Where: registration area, 1st floor.
What:

1. photos of people cueing at the registration booth
2. attendee getting his badge
3. staff working

10.00 AM – First conference session
Where: conference room, 2nd floor.
What

1. Horizontal photo of speaker with event name in the background
2. Vertical closeup of speaker
3. Panoramic photo of conference room from the back showing speaker, signage and participants

and so on…

Technical requirements

In most cases you don’t need to get down to technical details about the camera, lenses, etc but make sure that you specify clearly to the photographer the kind of photos you want, the use you are going to make of them (print or digital), etc. Camera or lens brands are not so important as making sure she understands what is expected and can decide which hardware to use.

Format

Hi-res uncompressed tiff files (300 dpi) will suffice for almost any standard print job and hi-res jpeg (72 dpi) for online promotion, powerpoint presentations etc. It is better to get the highest possible resolution and then reduce it when needed. If you work with a graphic design agency or someone else that will use this photos later, be sure to ask them if they have any special requirements and communicate them to the photographer.

Layout

A common mistake is that of getting only horizontal photos while in many brochures you need vertical ones!

Number of photos

It is better to ask for many pictures so that you have more to choose from.

Copyrights

Don’t forget to discuss the copyright issue with the photographer. Do you want exclusive rights on the photos? Does it cost more money? For business use it is always safer to have an authorization form signed by the photographer. If you’re working with amateurs and volunteers or if you don’t care about having the exclusivity of the photos you can always agree on a Creative Commons license.

Digital or film?

For most conferences digital is enough. I love film photography but with today’s digital photography technology you will almost never meet a situation where you have to use film. Besides, the time to get the digital photos delivered to you is much less, you can share them online immediately and your graphic designers can modify the results if needed.

On a further post I will write about photo classification, tagging and sharing.