The 2nd Annual Choose Clean Water Conference is over but still on my mind as we recap, document and provide feed back for what future NWF conferences could be like. This is my second conference with the NWF Mid Atlantic Regional office staff who work at bringing together 160 coalition members and the Chesapeake Bay regions movers and shakers who fight for clean water and a Saved Bay.
These events don't happen easy and a lot of planning and prep occurs prior and during to make them successful. Implementing tech in a fashion that helps promote and keep connected those who could not make the event a powerful motivator to continue the effort. Even more important those who attend but want more - more video, more pictures, more presentation material to bring back and share with their respective members.
What we were able to provide for the team was seen by others in our organization as a model for our other regional offices that are planning similar conferences. In fact the Great Lakes region is our next similar project happening in October and as we did for the Chesapeake here is just a taste of what to expect:
UStream Services - paid for service that at $99 provides an ad free service for up to 100 hours of broadcasting and video capturing - a decent cam that can focus and zoom from the back of the room is key. Also a very tall tri-pod.
YouTube - being able to have an account that exceeds the 10 min limit makes posting videos captured from FlipCams much easier, provided you edit and can easily compress your captured files. Also being able to convert captured UStream videos and converting them to YouStream keeps all your clips in one spot.
Flickr - having an account to quickly post images captured of speakers and guests. The trick is having more volunteers capturing images. Reducing those images is also critical as we learned that the free Flickr accounts has a space limit. Having card readers at your upload systems is a time saver.
SlideShare - getting the presentations posted prior to or during the speakers time slot was key to being able to link to them during tweets
Twitter - the power is always in the retweet and we had at one point 4 of the team tweeting various sessions always being sure to retweet each other or asking others in our network to share the posts.
FlipCams - spare cams is critical so you don't miss a session due to battery or space issues.
PowerPoint clickers - sounds simple but oh so important as you can't always predict where you can place the laptop to allow for advancement of slides.
Visible Tweets - http://visibletweets.com/ awesome program that takes a Twitter Hashtag and provides a display of all the tweets from the conference. Joined with a projector makes a great display in the lobby or during down times in the main conference ball room.
What The HashTag - monitors the Twitter Traffic and captures the twitter posts for documentation purposes
Laptops, Netbooks, iPads - what ever it takes to connect to a projector, we had them, and spares as you never know. This actually saved the group tremendous rental fees by providing this equipment.
Table Top video tripods - perfect for placing FlipCams in very small unobtrusive places.
Cabled access to Internet - most conferences you can arrange for WiFi, which can be costly FYI depending on how you negotiate with the conference or hotel. But having a cabled land line to ISP service is key to broadcasting or quick uploads as your files could be large.
Video conversion / compression software - I'm hooked on XiLisoft Video Converter http://www.xilisoft.com/ For $60 it's a no brainer and provides so many options my fingers would get tired from typing.
WiFi and Cell Service - being able to access the net or cell towers means mobile applications become very very useful. This makes the Droids and iPhones a powerful communications tools.
Well thought out organization is key, many meetings and prep goes into the planning but so does being able to roll with the punches and make do with what you have. We had audio issues the first day and a half with our streaming - video is nothing without good audio, alway keep that in mind if video is going to factor in to your engagement strategy. This is why paying for an audio service or good Public Address services might be worth the costs.
If you don't have WiFi service or good cell service consider an alternate location - people attending these conferences expect to get connected. Boosters may work but I've had mixed luck with these services.
I know I'm forgetting a whole bunch of details but I don't want to end up writing War and Peace. If you want to know more, comment or message me or send me a tweet. I'm game to share . . . look, nothing up my sleeve.
Michael Sola heads up the IT program at NWF. he's a blogger, invited presenter and speaker - he also rarely has to show ID to walk into a pub. Follow him at http://twitter.com/michaelsola : his views and comments are his own
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