DIGITAL DIVAS :: LIVE WEB VIDEO INSPIRES :: AND GEEK WEEK!

The most recent Digital Diva shin-dig inspired me, a little vino and a lot of chit-chat about social experiments and live streaming… all good stuff.

The ladies in the fabulous picture to the left, and I, were discussing live webcasting and what makes a live experience more compelling than just watching an on-demand web video?  Perhaps, we get a sense of intimacy that we share with the other viewers – when you know you are not alone in the “room” so to speak…  it is an intimate feeling, with the audience and the speaker, augmented by a sense of being there.  It makes the “viewer” more of a participant than a passive set of eyeballs.  Take that and top it off with some real-time interactivity and you have a fabulous recipe for attracting a real audience.

The best live webcast experience I ever had was at the launch of “Progressive Networks” first live streaming media experiments (a.k.a. Real Networks).

I guess it was 1996 and I can remember the haunting feeling as I listened to the audio streaming live, it would slow down and warp as I watched the “counter” go up on the webpage as people tuned in and down as people were dropped, folks from all over the world tuned in and shared in this sense of wonder.  They could be anywhere….  I was somewhere.  Who was listening in with me?

That was the very moment when I felt it in my gut, that somehow I was going to be a part of this thing… this magical thing we call streaming media.

Of course now a days we expect and need a lot more to go with the live experience, warped audio ain’t enough to let us know we are not alone in the “room”.  Now, we need to share thoughts and reactions, have the speakers respond to our concerns in real time and to top it off, we want our snarky comments to twitter and retweet to the global cesspool.

That is all well and good, but the real challenge is finding all that is live broadcasting in one place.  I am considering creating a “what’s live now” Media Portal that only announces live webcasts (live online video broadcasts) from all over the world – I could suck in feeds from Ustream, Livestream and the FCC.. and even The YouTube and Hulu.

It’s the vision I have for 2011 and I’d like your feedback on this effort and of course any developers interested in this project are welcome to join in the conversation.

I will be in and out of the Streaming Media East 2010 conference, I will have my Zoom recorder and may take some interviews to post to my new blog, by the way…

Do you like it?  Getting better, isn’t it?