Periscope provides a way for people to live-stream events. Will it change events forever? I think it most certainly will! What used to be quite the process; scheduling a camera crew and setting up lighting and sound, has turned into an easy mobile application. And not just from your end, but from the attendees’ end as well.
Here is how it works. When you sign into Periscope using your Twitter log in, your followers are instantly added to your account. You can watch what others are broadcasting at any given time as well as see how many are watching the broadcast. Those streams with the most ‘hearts’ end up with high rankings.
What does live-streaming mean for meeting planners? Here are just a few of my initial thoughts:
- Now we can set up a few key people to live-stream the event and share their thoughts and views. Seeing through the eyes of the president of the company or the keynote speaker certainly sounds interesting.
- 1 Attendee may actually equal 100s of attendees. If one person shows up with Periscope and live streams your event, 100s could be attending without you even knowing it.
- Meeting planners know that they have little control over many things; weather, plane schedules, attendees moods, etc. Periscope just added another, and that is control over the number of people “attending” our event? Then again, while live-streaming is nice, You-Just-Had-To-Be-There is often way better! This may just help us take marketing our event to another level.
- I will admit that the idea of live-streaming the meeting planner’s experience of the event would be one darn interesting item to watch. So few really understand the magic we make behind the scenes. But then again, should we tell them?
- Should we begin offering streaming packages? One attendee from a company can represent 10 attendees and offer to Periscope the workshops, meetings and such? That would definitely cut down on the carbon footprint of the event!
As with any new thing, time will tell. Perhaps Periscope will begin offering paid live-streaming options for events. I am certain there are some live concerts being live-streamed leaving the music industry to scramble for a plan on how to handle this new thing. We’ll see. In the meantime, I would love to know what you think!
