Video Content at a Modern Conference. Problems and Solutions.
No modern exhibition or conference is complete without a large amount of video content from the event. This includes a large array of recordings of reports, round tables, and discussions, which are first broadcast, then processed and subsequently stored somewhere. Ruslan Fatykhanov, one of Gorod IT's organizers, will share how to manage a large video archive at the conference, which will be held in Tomsk on September 6-7 for the tenth year in a row.
About the Conference
Gorod IT (IT City) is the Eastern Russia's largest regional conference for entrepreneurs, managers, and specialists working in the field of information technology.
Gorod IT was conceived as a platform for IT industry specialists to engage potential customers from outside the IT sector. In its first two years, 2009 and 2010, the conference, was held in a typical client-company rep format. Over time, however, organizers realized that IT specialists primarily interacted with their peers, even after they'd finished working with potential customers. They came to the realization that the IT industry lacked a specialized discussion platform. As a result, in 2012, the conference was designed specifically for IT industry professionals. It went off with a bang, after which Gorod IT began to grow rapidly.
From year to year, the conference gradually expanded, attracting more and more IT professionals, as well as managers, marketers, businesspersons, and government representatives. The number of participants increased to 2,000, while up to 100 speakers were invited to present at the conference. The small room that featured a single-threaded program with one speaker after another turned into a large two-day conference with seven parallel lectures, workshops, and round tables.
Rapid growth inevitably entails organizational difficulties that need to be addressed to avoid them from impeding this forum's further expansion.
Gorod IT was conceived as a platform for IT industry specialists to engage potential customers from outside the IT sector. In its first two years, 2009 and 2010, the conference, was held in a typical client-company rep format. Over time, however, organizers realized that IT specialists primarily interacted with their peers, even after they'd finished working with potential customers. They came to the realization that the IT industry lacked a specialized discussion platform. As a result, in 2012, the conference was designed specifically for IT industry professionals. It went off with a bang, after which Gorod IT began to grow rapidly.
From year to year, the conference gradually expanded, attracting more and more IT professionals, as well as managers, marketers, businesspersons, and government representatives. The number of participants increased to 2,000, while up to 100 speakers were invited to present at the conference. The small room that featured a single-threaded program with one speaker after another turned into a large two-day conference with seven parallel lectures, workshops, and round tables.
Rapid growth inevitably entails organizational difficulties that need to be addressed to avoid them from impeding this forum's further expansion.
Challenge 1. Attract a critical mass of forum attendees.
The forum's critical mass is the number of people that need to be invited for the forum to have an interactive and unifying feeling to it. The critical mass for Gorod IT is currently 1,000 people.
Solution
To solve this issue, the decision was made to invite speakers from around Russia and the world. This is because practice shows that the Tomsk audience responds better to visiting speakers since they're unaware that there are local companies with success stories at the international level.
Challenge 2. The Organizing Team
Another important problem is putting together a team to organize this event and letting them go once it's done, keeping only the core organizing elements. This means new people need to be trained for each conference, which requires additional resources to be spent.
Solution
This issue can be solved by hosting several more events throughout the year. Additional expenditures can be avoided by using video tutorials and detailed job descriptions with checklists to train new members.
Challenge 3. Content
The third big problem the organizers are trying to tackle is content. All the reports delivered at the event, all the round tables, and all the discussions need to be filmed, processed, and stored. On top of that, not all potential participants can actually attend the conference. The ones that can, can't be present at all platforms at the same time. This then raises the need to sort out video content, upload it to the server, and broadcast it in open or closed access. In addition, after the conference, it is necessary to leave an information trail made up of individual reports or thematic blocks for several months.
Challenge 4. Online Broadcast
Another important issue is providing live online broadcasts from the conference. The combination of different video streams is a difficult technical task when five broadcast signals are being transmitted in tandem. The question then becomes where to broadcast them, how to direct them, and what to do with them overall. These broadcasts are currently streamed on YouTube, but the organizers want to do it on their website in an effort to develop their own brand. Using third-party sites, such as social media networks and video hosting sites, for primary video hosting provides traffic to these sites, not to the corporate site. This creates a host of issues around copyright law, questions on conducting effective search engine optimization (SEO), and increasing their brand equity.
Solution
The Gorod IT conference organizers posited they would need a special portal that:
a) would allow them to store a closed video database where some useful information would be in the public domain and the other part would be sold for a fee;
b) acted as a kind of information portal that would cover Tomsk speakers, Tomsk companies, and industry news;
c) would contribute to growing Gorod IT's brand;
d) would allow video streams to be managed the way conference organizers planned, not in accordance with the rules of third-party sites - distributing them by channels and thematic blocks, indexability of useful information among the entire video archive, etc.
In their search for a solution to this issue, Gorod IT organizers turned to Telebreeze, a company involved in developing ISP, digital broadcasting, and OTT media service solutions. The company's new product, the cloud video platform Telebreeze Cloud, will be released in the first half of September 2019.
a) would allow them to store a closed video database where some useful information would be in the public domain and the other part would be sold for a fee;
b) acted as a kind of information portal that would cover Tomsk speakers, Tomsk companies, and industry news;
c) would contribute to growing Gorod IT's brand;
d) would allow video streams to be managed the way conference organizers planned, not in accordance with the rules of third-party sites - distributing them by channels and thematic blocks, indexability of useful information among the entire video archive, etc.
In their search for a solution to this issue, Gorod IT organizers turned to Telebreeze, a company involved in developing ISP, digital broadcasting, and OTT media service solutions. The company's new product, the cloud video platform Telebreeze Cloud, will be released in the first half of September 2019.
What is Telebreeze Cloud?
Telebreeze Cloud is a platform where users can organize their own video portal that allows them to create internal channels, a video archive, the ability to sort out an array of content, and other video flow management tools. Telebreeze Cloud can look like an online video theater, like a corporate video portal, or like a platform for streaming video.
How Gorod IT uses Telebreeze Cloud
Gorod IT intends to use it as a corporate branded portal to manage its video archive. After the conference, the entire video archive will be posted on Telebreeze Cloud, where content can be prepared for different delivery networks (YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, Instagram, etc.), audiences, transfer rates, devices for user convenience while watching videos.
Implementing this solution into the conference's platform will facilitate internal processes:
1. Organizing broadcasts will be technically easier, since, in this case, we'll only need to transmit the signal to the portal with everything else happening inside Telebreeze Cloud;
2. Using Telebreeze Cloud's resources, all reports can be processed and posted so users visit the site after the conference to find the events they want to see, while the organizers, in turn, collect statistics on speakers' popularity to use when organizing future conferences;
3. Engaging the audience through videos will be directed at engaging with Gorod IT's brand, instead of distributing it on other sites and social networks.
The organizers hope that, with Telebreeze, they will be able to create their own strong brand and strengthen their position in the realm of organizing events for IT industry professionals.
Implementing this solution into the conference's platform will facilitate internal processes:
1. Organizing broadcasts will be technically easier, since, in this case, we'll only need to transmit the signal to the portal with everything else happening inside Telebreeze Cloud;
2. Using Telebreeze Cloud's resources, all reports can be processed and posted so users visit the site after the conference to find the events they want to see, while the organizers, in turn, collect statistics on speakers' popularity to use when organizing future conferences;
3. Engaging the audience through videos will be directed at engaging with Gorod IT's brand, instead of distributing it on other sites and social networks.
The organizers hope that, with Telebreeze, they will be able to create their own strong brand and strengthen their position in the realm of organizing events for IT industry professionals.