Ignite is a community event that was started in Seattle, Wa and now occurs worldwide. Speakers have 5 minutes and 20 slides to say anything. The slides advance automatically every 20 seconds and the topics vary from educational to humorous. Often the talks are a mixture of both. Ignite Portland 6 took place at the Bagdad Theater on July 16, 2009.
Production Goals
I worked with the event organizers to plan and produce a live event stream. The deliverables were:
- Multi-camera production including slides
- Live Stream to a web audience with chat and twitter integration
- Audio/video feed to the backstage bar
- High quality master files and web files saved to disk
Planning
The event started 2 months out with the reservation of dates and brief overview of the effort involved. Major planning events were:
- 2 Months out: Confirmation of event resources and general goals.
- 1 Month out: Site visit to review requirements for audio/video feed to BackStage Bar.
- 3 weeks out: Production meeting with sound, slides, and video teams.
- 1 week out: Onsite technical rehearsal.
Day of Event
The audio/visual teams arrived onsite at 12:00 to begin the setup. This involves unloading gear, placing the equipment, and testing. For the video requirements we laid over 1,000 feet of cable to the cameras, the projection booth, and to the BackStage Bar. A clean source of audio was not available and we were forced to utilize an open wireless lav mic. This is not the case at most events.
While I’m busy with the video requirements. The other teams are busy building the last minute slide deck changes, testing sound, and all other requirements for the live performance.
This was the first Ignite were we fed audio/video to the backstage bar. This provided a place for overflow crowds and also for people to attend in a setting where they can tune in or out while talking with friends. We ended up feeding a projector and all the bar TV’s.
We were live from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm. The live stream had 285 unique viewers with a constant audience of 110 people. The online community switched between chat and twitter streams to connect with each other and the event as a whole.
By 11:30 pm we were packed up, tired, and ready to head home.
Day After
The master video file was edited into separate talks, encoded into a web format, and uploaded to Youtube.