In today’s virtual events landscape, it’s all about customer success, reason why an increasing number of live streaming providers are becoming more solutions-oriented by offering professional web-streaming services. At Tree-Fan Events, along with our main AV partner, we leverage more than two decades of video-streaming knowledge and media production — encompassing everything from configuring systems to architecting unique streaming solutions — to help organizations transition to virtual events successfully.
Why the Event Industry Needs Our Professional Live Streaming Services
Even though in today’s reality, anyone with a smartphone can capture video and stream the content to billions of users on the internet, what occurs in the background is quite complicated. The data must be encoded, packaged, and often transcoded for delivery to virtually any screen on the planet. Making live video work across platforms and at scale takes skill and experience.
The right configurations for live streaming vary depending on what an organization is trying to achieve. For example, many virtual events and especially music events require the best audio possible. If all you’ve got to worry about is security cameras? Not so much. And while during a virtual event, video chats don’t need to be streamed in 4K, maximizing quality is crucial for many fundraising virtual event livecasts. If you’d like to nerd out more on this, here’s a great article on the best audio codecs for live streaming.
During the consultation process to transitioning to a virtual event, many of our clients start by considering free platforms like Facebook Live, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Twitch, and others, but then quickly realize that these platforms do come with security concerns, limited functionality and substantial infrastructure behind it. Monetization can also be difficult, if that’s a concern, as these platforms lend themselves to marketing efforts rather than building live-streaming solutions.
And so many organizations are intimidated and don’t know where to begin when it comes to implementing live streaming technology. The good news is, for anyone looking to leverage this technology without in-house video expertise, our professional live streaming services can eliminate any of the stumbling blocks. Working with our web-streaming experts and using our web-streaming platform, will help accelerate time to value, speed up the pivoting process, and enable your virtual event’s success. We can also make recommendations specifically to your event’s needs according to our industry best practices to help with everything from concept to execution. What’s more, we can customize workflow solutions to your organization’s unique resources and budget.
Today, customer experience is as important as (if not more important than) an organization’s core offering. As a result, we have made the smart decision to move beyond our focus on tech and instead focus on how tech can better serve you, our client – and delivering a streamlined experience will only ensure our mutual success. Whether through partnerships such as the ones we currently have, new product innovations, or professional service offerings, we expect this focus on the customer experience to boost cross-industry collaboration and drive interoperability in the current day and age.
While social distancing efforts spurred by the coronavirus outbreak have already catapulted the event industry into a decidedly more digital world, the following three technologies — 5G connectivity, edge computing, and low-latency video delivery — will ensure that video streaming and hybrid events are here to stay.
Live Streaming Predictions for the Future
In this new worlds of hybrid events and video streaming, three predictions for the future of streaming distinguished themselves and center around improved interoperability, increased speed, and ubiquitous streaming:
Improved Interoperability: industry leaders are partnering to provide more holistic solutions for their customers, with open-source alternatives trending.
Increased Speed: Low-latency streaming has always been a goal, but that’s not all. Without also delivering on consumer demands for high-quality video and distributor requirements for scalability, low-latency streaming doesn’t hold a lot of weight. With the addition of 5G, edge computing and low-latency protocols, the stage is now set for live streaming to deliver on all three capabilities in the coming years.
Ubiquitous Streaming: According to Cisco, the number of internet-connected devices will be more than three times the global population by 2023. And with that, it’s safe to assume that a number of these will implement live streaming technology — being as today’s smartphones, refrigerators, drones, and cars already do. To put it another way, according to Wowza, “the internet of things will give way to an internet of streams.”
Without a doubt, video streaming has not just found its way into the events industry, but is finding its way into every industry. And yet, most organizations lack the practical know-how to implement this technology and that’s where our streaming expertise comes handy and our goal is simple: to take the burden off you and your staff while you refocus your efforts on your core mission activities. Contact us to schedule a FREE 30 minute video consultation to learn more about our event live streaming offerings and see if we could be a great fit for you and your future event (virtual or hybrid).
