Just over a week ago we were privileged to sponsor the recording of Peace One Day Insights at the Grange City Hotel in London.

For those that aren’t aware of Peace One Day I urge you to visit the site and read and watch all about it. Then get involved! It is the most exciting and worthwhile ‘cause’ I have come across in recent years and is starting to gain real traction, as its visionary founder Jeremy Gilley (pictured) and his team of supporters and patrons work towards institutionalising a global day of non-aggression on the 21st September every year, so that it becomes as established in the world’s calendars as Mother’s Day. Having met Jeremy for the first time, I was supremely impressed and equally moved by his energy, enthusiasm and unwavering passion for a cause he began creating fully 12 years ago. This video tells you how it all began…

The Peace One Day Insights events are specifically targeted at SMEs. This is not surprising given that SMEs account for two-thirds of all employment globally and there are over 4.5 million of them in the UK alone. Jeremy together with President of the patrons programme Steve Bolton have identified this as the ideal target audience to help them build the groundswell of activity and engagement that is needed to make this a self-sustaining day in everyone’s calendar.

Aside form Mr Gilley’s energy and dedication, the thing that struck me having attended the event and later reviewing some of our recordings, was how much synergy there was between all the speakers and the cause the event is designed to support. Sounds obvious that it should be the case, but it shows great skill and sensitivity on the part of the person who researched and developed the day’s programme and also underlines the power of a truly worthwhile cause to draw in people who are naturally aligned with its objectives.

If you would like to see the recordings we have set them up on a Vimeo channel here. As an aside, I would be interested to hear your views on Vimeo as a viewer. It is the first time we have used it to create a channel. Seems to have some good attributes, although it is somehwhat annoying that you don’t have the freedom to instantly jump up and down the timeline as you do with our CDN hosted recordings. You have to wait for the file to download before you can jump to the end. That said; don’t jump to the end! All these recordings are all well worth watching.

Watch out for more news as BeThere Global becomes more involved with Peace One Day!

For a few years it was simple; Flash Video in the form of a .flv file was the preferred method of streaming to reach the widest possible audience. Then the H264 codec came along, HTML5 became a hot topic and Apple decided not to support Flash Video any more. Oh dear… it all got complicated and confusing again as the string of numbers and letters in the title of this blog confirms. Follow this link if you want to know more on the subject of The State of HTML5 Video.

So now, once again it’s a battle and we have two major competing formats; H264 and Google’s WebM (using the VP8 codec). Why oh why can’t they give these formats more user friendly names? This week WebM, took a major knockback when Mozilla (creators of the Firefox browser) announced support for H.264, which is now looking increasingly victorious in this latest format war.

Okay, so let’s assume that H.264 prevails and becomes the video compression technology of choice. Aside from concerns about H.264 being encumbered by patent royalty payments against the royalty-free WebM format, what does this really mean in practical terms for people like us who stream video both live and on demand?

Well, H.264 uses the MPEG-4 standard and can equal MPEG-2 quality at around half the data rate and across the entire bandwidth spectrum. So that means it’s great quality and efficient to stream to many different types of device using different speed connections. All good news so far, but there is a problem and it’s this; if you are using Flash Media Live Encoder 3.2 to create H.264 files as many webcasters currently do, then the F4V files created are designed to be streamed and will not play locally and cannot be edited!

Don’t despair; there is a sand wedge available to get us out of this particular bunker. Thanks to our CTO Mark Buckland for being a great Caddy and figuring out how to play this shot and making it as simple as possible! (Apologies for the abrupt jump into a golfing analogy, but it seemed to fit.)

First you have to ‘flatten’ the file using something called the f4v post processor. You can download this from the Adobe website as part of the Flash Media Server Tools. It doesn’t take long for a reasonable size file to process, but it is important to follow the following steps;

1. Place the f4vpp.exe file in the same directory as the file you need to flatten.

   

2. Open a command prompt window, by hitting Start and then type RUN in the search window.

   

3. In the box that opens up type cmd.exe to open the Command prompt window.

4. You now you need to Change Directory to the location where your f4v file (and of course the f4vpp.exe file) are located. If it happens to be a folder called ‘c:\capture’, then the command you need to type is ‘cd\capture’.

   

5. Next you need to enter the command to start the conversion. It must be typed accurately or the conversion will not work. Note that you cannot cut and paste either. The command is f4vpp.exe –i filename.f4v (where filename is the name of the file you wish to convert).

   Hit enter and the program will generate a new file with an ‘-f’ appended to the name, indicating that it has been flattened. This file can now be played locally.

6. However, your troubles may not be over yet. These are not straightforward files to edit; if you don’t want it to re render itself completely that is. Often there are time pressures precluding this. The simplest and fastest technique we have found in this case is to first of all to change the file extension to mp4, simply by renaming it. The system will warn you that the file may not be usable afterwards but you can ignore this.

7. Now you can use a program called Xilisoft Video Cutter 2 to mark the start and end points of the video. Note you can mark multiple video clips by hitting the + symbol and marking more clips. When you are ready hit CUT. The system will prompt for a file name and location for the new files and you can select to ‘keep the original format’ if that is what you want. When you are ready click ‘OK’.

   A new file will be created with ‘–cut’ added to the file name. These are true mp4 files and will play on most devices.

I wonder what challenge will be thrown at us next?

It’s great fun this global business malarkey!
Last week we were in Amsterdam and responsible for live webcasting the keynote speech at Blackberry DevCon Europe (and also recording many of the breakout sessions) working with our friends at Shelton Fleming and Blitz Communications. This week we were in Las Vegas with M-Is webcasting the HP press event announcing Proliant Gen8 servers. And now today and tomorrow we are recording a training course for ISUOG in Paris.
And all the time I’ve not set foot a plane!
Mostly London events for a while now so I won’t feel so left out of the air miles race.

Occasionally when I come across a service which just seems to make perfect sense I feel the need to write about it.
When it also offers a way to spend less money on stuff you really don’t want to have to pay for at all, then I feel it is all the more important I share the good news!
CaxtonFX is the provider of one such service and I would like to point out at the outset that I have no connection, affiliation or any other commercial interest in them save for being a happy customer! I also realise this service is not unique, but it is the one I have happened across and works for me. CaxtonFX offer a number of services in the foreign transaction space, but the one I am particularly enamoured with is their online foreign currency payments product.
I have used this to pay a number of suppliers and partners in both the Eurozone and the USA with ease and it is certainly a tool we will be making more use off as our global conference recording and web broadcasting business continues to expand.
In a nutshell this service allows me to easily make foreign currency payments at any time I like at a better exchange rate than the bank offers and for NO additional fee. Compare that to the bank who charge me £17 every time I make such a transaction, which can rack up to a significant amount over time. I know some banks don’t even allow foreign currency payments without a lot of form filling. Not only that, with CaxtonFX I can access the payment system at any time I like; with my bank it has to be between 0830 and 1530 (UK time) Monday to Friday, which if you are dealing with a supplier in a different timezone can delay a payment considerably. The service is very simple to use and I make my payments using a debit card, but I think you can also do a bank transfer.

I got to hear about the service when I met Guy Richardson who is Corporate Sales Manager of Caxton FX at an Eventia evening last year. When he told about what they did I was sceptical and thought there had to be a catch – you know the old adage “if it sounds too good to be true it probably is”, or that I wouldn’t be doing enough transactions to be able to access the service. But having used this service a number of times now there really doesn’t seem to be a catch at all. It really is an easy and convenient way for anyone who needs to make foreign currency payments to avoid spending money on stuff you don’t want to! Guy and his team made setting up the account quick and easy and were very available to answer questions the first couple of times I used it.
Thanks CaxtonFX!

Web broadcasting has changed the way we communicate with the world.

Now, pretty much anyone can reach an audience comparable in size to that achieved by the ‘old-school’ mainstream media. And the great thing is that there is hardly any sector of industry, field of expertise or area of interest that would not benefit from the highly effective and efficient communication that web broadcasting enables.
Not only that, now that it is affordable to associations or businesses of all sizes, web broadcasting is very democratic. Even individuals can join in!
Using web broadcasting, associations, businesses and individuals can compete equally for attention on this global stage.

By promoting web broadcasts via social media, significant audiences can be attracted at very low cost, with the side benefit of an enhanced online reputation and a higher profile and level of engagement. This can result in increased brand awareness and lead generation for companies and improved membership retention and recruitment for associations.
Of course, seminars, conferences and congresses provide ideal content for web broadcasting. But as well as this, training, induction and other internal and external communications projects may be broadcast to a ‘web only’ audience – often referred to as virtual events.

At this very moment, people could be watching your organization’s web broadcasts from virtually any place on earth. Take into account the affordable nature of the medium and the low cost of using social media to propagate your audience, and you can web broadcast your event to the world at a fraction of the cost of more traditional marketing techniques like print advertsing.
Broadcasting your knowledge or expertise over the web is one of the most powerful tools that any organization has at its disposal. If you don’t want to be left behind, your organization should be taking advantage of web broadcasting; many already are.

At a different level, the momentum created by the wild popularity of digital media with groups and individuals of every race, colour, creed and persuasion participating, means that web broadcasting is becoming truly universal in reach. By helping to disseminate knowledge and foster mutual understanding and empathy among disparate groups of people around the globe, web broadcasting has the potential to be a significant force for good.

Making bigger gains, whatever that might be in your particular circumstances is often dependent on one’s ability to reach a larger audience. Of course this is the fundamental principle behind advertising; spend to reach a large audience and then let the customer come to you, pre qualified. The key point is that the customer has to know you exist before they can purchase anything from you.

The same principle applies in web broadcasting; the target audience needs to be built, nurtured and promoted-to. It is no good setting up any kind of web broadcast and not preparing and informing your audience in just the same way as you would in setting up a face to face event. In fact you probably need to do a lot more, as without travel involved it is very easy to just not ‘show up’!

Just like the advertising analogy, your audience need to know your event exists and know how to join in – otherwise they won’t buy it. The right people are very unlikely to just come across your web broadcast at the right time without influence. And depending on your relationship with your audience that ‘influencing’ might be a case of telling, persuading, cajoling, telling again… yes shouting about it!

It is imperative your web broadcast is marketed effectively to your audience and they need to be totally informed as to when, where and how it will take place. They must make an appointment with your web broadcast, put it their diary, their Outlook, their Google Calendar, their iCalendar… just as if they were attending a physical conference.

As I write this, we are working with our friends at George P Johnson to live webcast the IBM Smarter Business 2011 conference taking place in Oslo. Their clients at IBM have embedded our stream into their Facebook page.

I must admit to thinking it was only possible to embed a live video stream in Facebook using the Livestream plug in. Very encouraging to see this is plainly not the case. I think we will be shamelessly borrowing this technique in the future! Good work IBM!

1. Are you frustrated at the amount of time and effort that goes into putting the presentations together, for them only to be seen and heard once by an audience limited to the number of seats you can squeeze in the room?
2. Do you want to engage a remote audience who cannot or will not physically attend your event?
3. Do you believe that there is inherent value in the knowledge and expertise contained in your presentation content that you should be recording?
4. Do you want to reduce the cost of your event? Of course this needn’t be limited to hard cash; you may be looking to reduce the environmental price tag too.
5. Do you want to enhance the experience of delegates by giving them access to recordings of the sessions?
6. Are you trying to find new ways to retain and recruit members?
7. Are you looking for new ways to generate revenue for your organization?

If you answered yes to any of these, then you should be talking to us about recording and webcasting your next conference, congress, seminar or presentation.

Why? Because we have a straightforward, proven and affordable solution to all of these problems.

Please get in touch, or simply fill in the form.

Following the news in February that we were establishing our first foothold in continental Europe with the appointment of Mick Jelsdal Jørgensen and Sebastian Schröder (both pictured above) of Northern Equity Partners, based in Copenhagen, as Sales Agents operating in Scandinavia and Germany, we are delighed to announce the launch of a dedicated Danish website to further support this growth.

Fremad og opad! (That’s ‘onwards and upwards’ – I hope!)

For those involved in organizing workshops, seminars, conferences and congresses… in fact pretty much any kind of face to face event, here are seven compelling reasons why you might want to web broadcast your event.

1. You are frustrated at the amount of time and effort that goes into putting the presentations together, for them only to be seen and heard once by an audience limited to the number of seats you can squeeze in the room.
2. You want to engage a remote audience who cannot or will not physically attend your event.
3. You believe that there is inherent value in the knowledge and expertise contained in your presentation content that would benefit a wider audience.
4. You need to reduce the cost of your event; financial and/or environmental.
5. You want to enhance the experience for delegates by giving them access to recordings of the sessions to view afterwards and share with colleagues.
6. You would like to generate additional revenue for your organization through selling access to your web broadcasts or through sponsorship.
7. You see an opportunity to build a library of assets to benefit your staff / customers/ members.

Which of these apply to your organization?