Facebook Live-Stream: Marketing Bootcamp Fail

by kathryn on November 3, 2011

in live streaming,video

Crossposted at VirtualOvationTV

The Facebook marketing team behind the spinning wheel of death- People or corporate autmatons?

I love live streaming. I have devoted my career to building live streaming into the performing arts. Live streaming offers you an unparalleled method of both communicating with your audience on an authentic, granular level and of building community around your brand.

 

Note the words Community and Communicate.

For the past two days I have been logging into the Facebook Marketing Bootcamp streamed live via Livestream ( a company I love).

Now, as much as anyone, I understand how hard it is to stream live – there are a multitude of factors which need to be in perfect order in order to send a stream that is both visually and audibly clear. But this is Facebook!!!! A multi-billon dollar technology company that is attempting to launch a huge advertising initiative with this bootcamp, and they can’t stream a live event that will load and that is audible? Come on!

So, yes… technically I would give this stream a fail… but after two days there are two far more important reasons I think that Facebook Marketing Bootcamp Live is failing- and they go back to the greatest assets of livestreaming- COMMUNICATION AND COMMUNITY.

On the first day of the bootcamp thousands of us set our reminders so that we arrived on the bootcamp page with five or ten minutes to spare. A perfect opportunity for Facebook to send out a message in the player that says something like

“Hi! Thanks so much for coming to our first Facebook Marketing Bootcamp. We are so glad you are here! We will begin at 12:30 EST and so look forward to answering your questions”.

Ahh…as a viewer i feel like my time is valued, I matter to the company and I am  reassured that I have come to the right place at the right time. I am relaxed, taken care of and ready to hear Facebook’s message with an open (even excited) mind.

Instead… Facebook had a keynote speech given by Sheryl Sandburg auto-playing on the page. Great speech…but the news feed below the video was filled with viewers who were confused. They thought they had come to a live event- why was a pre-taped video playing? (want a simple fix… just add a scroll with the welcome message above and all your potential customers feel taken care of and acknowledged.)

Then, 12:35 and the stream hadn’t begun… still no message from Facebook. This is appointment viewing. Respect your audience by letting them know that you know they are there, they are waiting, they have taken time out of their day, and you will be with them shortly. Again… a simple scrolling message will solve the issue. Perhaps Click to continue reading post…

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Talking about Live-Streaming and the Performing Arts at #140 Hudson Valley

by kathryn on September 28, 2011

in acting,digital media,internet tv,launching an arts company,live streaming,new media,online video,technology,theater,video

This past August I had the great joy to be a speaker at the 140 Characters Conference in Kingston, NY.

My focus was on how social media and live-streaming has the capacity to reinvent all of the performing arts, from theater to music to dance- enabling even small companies to reach audiences and ignite passionate conversations about their work on a global scale. In the clip below  I talk about how proud we are of the conversations that sprang up all over twitter about the issues raised in our live-stream of Better Left Unsaid, I hypothesize about how a successful  theater company could expand their business model by live-streaming performances, and I talk about the Laplaca Cohen Culture Track, which gives great information about  how people who frequent cultural events utilize social media.

 

Thank you to Dragon Search Internet Marketing Company for hosting the conference and posting the video!

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Building My Arts Business by Tracking My Life- Financially, Creatively and Calorie-ly

by kathryn on June 6, 2011

in acting,business,launching an arts company

Creative Capital Professional Development Two weeks ago I had the incredible opportunity to participate in the Creative Capital Professional Development Weekend, sponsored by The Field.  The weekend is designed to give artists the tools they need to turn their art into a viable business and to dispel our beliefs that artists  cannot  live a financially rewarding life.  As an artist who has long worshipped at the alter of scarcity and lack of entitlement it was almost counter-intuitive to hear words like Rewards, More,  Strategic Planning, and Success.  I experienced a huge waterfall of relief every time the weekend leader, the marvelous, kind, inspiring, enlightened Colleen Keegan insisted  ”If it is punitive it is not working” – her most oft repeated refrain.  As both a woman and an artist I have long had a profound lack of self-entitlement, a deep seated belief that if I was going to live an unconventional life I must then struggle and not expect happiness. No success could ever feel like a success, but instead more proof that no matter how hard I worked I would always be poor, creatively unfulfilled, unrecognized and struggling.

The takeaways from the weekend were innumerable, from info on writing business plans and mission statements, to learning to how to budget a project and figure out my personal hourly rate, to learning how to talk about and promote my work Read Post…

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Let’s Put On A (live-streamed) Show!

by kathryn on May 24, 2011

in acting,actor,digital media,internet tv,live streaming,new media,theater

This article was first published in the April Issue of Scene4 Magazine

Lets Put on a live streamed show- mickey rooney and judy garlandThe American theatrical blogosphere has been awash these past few months with responses to Rocco Landesman’s recent speech in which he asserted that the supply of arts in America has outpaced demand. If, as Mr. Landesman believes, attendance at American theater is decreasing while simultaneously the number of theaters is increasing, than clearly we have created an unsustainable business model. There has been both outrage at Mr. Landesman’s comments, and some agreement. Are there too many theaters? Are there too few theatergoers? Is this the wrong time to start a theater company? Whose work is worthy of support in such a competitive atmosphere? Has the American theater community nurtured a business model that is destined to fail?

But perhaps the heart of the issue isn’t that American theater audiences are declining, but rather that American theater isn’t finding its audience. Perhaps the most important question is where are today’s audiences – and how do we reach them?

In a recent article for American Theater Magazine, Susan Miller wrote of the joy she has found as a theater artist discovering that she can write, produce, distribute and have full creative ownership of her projects when she works in online video. Susan writes that working online harnesses all the energy of our younger years when “Lets put on a show!” was a thrilling call to action, be it in a high school auditorium, an out of the way black box, or even a barn – Mickey Rooney style. The key difference? This show has the capacity to be seen by thousands and thousands of people and continues to be seen long past the final curtain.

I love Susan’s notion that online video is the next great frontier for theater artists. And I think there is a specific facet of web video that holds the most promise to those of us who have spent our careers on stage. The natural pairing of theater and online video …live-streaming.

As theater artists who thrive on the spontaneity, danger and electricity of live performance [click to continue…]

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AND. The promise of Live Streaming Theater

by kathryn on March 3, 2011

in actor,internet tv,live streaming,new media,online video,social media,technology,video

This post was originally published on the 2AMt blog. It summarizes the history, the reasons behind,  metrics, the technical and aesthetic requirements of and the successes of our production of Better Left Unsaid TV, the first of it’s kind interactive live streamed play. To skip to the section that most interests you click the appropriate word in the previous sentence.

Miguel Govea and Jessica Arinella in Better Left Unsaid by Joey Brenneman

On January 21st of this year, my producing partners and I began previews of the first of its kind, interactive live streamed play. This was a full length production of Joey Brenneman’s Better Left Unsaid, cast with professional New York actors, staged in a small off-off broadway house in front of a live audience for a three week run. AND…simultaneously Better Left Unsaid was shot with four cameras, mixed in real time and streamed live to the internet so that anyone, anywhere in the world could  see the show. The bonus for online viewers was that they could interact with the live streamed theater experience via Facebook, Twitter and chat rooms.

Producing a play is complicated. Producing a live streamed play incorporates everything it takes to produce a play and adds to that everything you need to do to produce a live television shown- with the always wavering unknowns of live streaming technology thrown in to the mix. We climbed a lot of hurdles to reach opening night, almost as many to arrive at our final performance and ended our nine month journey on the highest of notes. We had over 50,000 unique viewers join us for the final three performances of Better Left Unsaid. We received virtual standing ovations from people all over the world. We proved that people will in fact pay for online video, at least if it is positioned as theater. Finally, we had the great honor, joy and sometimes nervous breakdown of launching a brand new theatrical paradigm, born of today’s technology.

Why live stream a play? Honestly there are a million reasons- the most obvious are… click to read post…

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Better Left Unsaid opens next week!

January 14, 2011 video

Off I go, into the wild blue yonder of live streaming and theater! So excited for my newest project! I hope you will come!!!! Tweet This Post

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LyvaFest goes live!

November 10, 2010 video

Congrats to LYVA and your first, fantastic live streamed Concert! Catch it tonight from 7- Midnight…eastern! Tweet This Post

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Can theater thrive in a YouTube world?

September 17, 2010 live streaming

“Theater People: We need you!” So said Virginia Heffernan, digital media critic of the New York Times when reviewing my live streamed online video series “35″. It was a rough night- we had sound problems, we had camera problems- in fact we shot all 10 episodes on a budget of less than $6000- and yet [...]

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In Memoriam – With Expectation

September 11, 2010 faith

For me it’s the New York Times. Every September 11 it happens. I open the paper and am confronted with blank empty spaces, the word’s “in memoriam” and “we remember” where fancy bangles and bespoke shoes usually thrive — and I dissolve. The blankness the only appropriate metaphor for the violence in which 3000 of [...]

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Live Online Video up 600% according to Comscore

September 7, 2010 live streaming

…actually 648% according to Andres Palmiter in his recent article for Comscore.  To further gild the lily, live streamed videos are holding on to their audiences 7% longer than traditional on demand video. Why are live online broadcasts attracting and keeping an audience? In a world with hundreds of thousands of videos on demand, live [...]

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