Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

The UStream Experiment (Con't)

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So last night, David Jakes, Steve Dembo and I met in a wifi enabled restaurant in Chicago to watch some of the Cubs game (sniff) and to put UStream.tv through its paces by doing a “live” remote broadcast which we Tweeted out as “2.5 Cubs Fans in a Bar.” Let me just say, in a word or two, it was a great deal of fun, as you can easily tell by the amount of wide-eyed wondering that was going on. It probably should have been titled “3 Guys Amazed that New Technologies Actually Work With Little Effort.” And while I don’t want to spend an inordinate amount of time reflecting on it, I did learn a few things last night that I’ll just bullet out.

  • If we can do this using wifi in a public place, we’re getting close to really starting to think out of the box with technology. This was cheap and easy.
  • It was fascinating (and distracting) to watch the progress of the chat. People, thankfully, just tuned us out and started connecting around what they found important, tuning back in when they heard something relevant or interesting. And they were teaching each other how to change the colors of the text, to connect the stream out around social tools, and I’m sure much more than that. (You can read through the 28-page chat if you like.)
  • The global reach of the network and the speed that it reaches out still really amazes me. We had people from Australia, New Zealand, China, Argentina and all across the US. All collected initially, at least, by posting on Twitter. We got up to 43 people in the room, which was about four times as many as I thought we’d get. It is instant audience.
  • I loved the fact that I was learning and getting answers from the audience. For instance, we were lamenting the fact that Twitter was no longer allowing us to see older Tweets when Karen Hokansen chatted in that it had been fixed. Ok, not earth-shattering, I know, but still…

If all goes according to plan, Saturday at 11 am EST I’ll be at the MediaTech center where I live doing a live stream interview with a group of game playing middle schoolers. I’ll Tweet it out a reminder, and it would be great to get some questions from the audience. I also might see who I can rope in for a keynote in Chicago today at 2:45 Central…

Thanks to all those that dropped in. Would love to hear your reactions.

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Comments

  2. Steve Dembo says

    Heh, just scrolled through the 28 pages of chat. Someone needs to show Sheryl where the caps lock key is! *grins*

    Seriously though, I agree, my gut feeling is this is significant. It’s not just another Web2.0 tool to throw in the tool box. Jasmine, a student at SLA, was in attendance and it looks like I’m going to be mentoring her as she tries to figure out how this can be used by students in the classroom. Looking forward to seeing what she comes up with!

    We know there are plenty of old things we can do using uStream, but what NEW things does this lend itself to? What can we do that we couldn’t do before?

  4. Claudia Ceraso says

    Hi Will! Really enjoyed the experience. Pity the Skype call turned out to be too noisy for me to hear David Jakes.

    Steve, I agree with you this tool is significant and I would add signifying. If we can do this kind of online meetings, what is the new purpose we will give to our face-to-face private experiences in a classroom?

    My reflections in a post (linked to my name).

  5. Stephanie Sandifer says

    Will,

    I was able to pop in at the beginning this morning during a break from a Leadership Academy retreat that I was attending in Galveston.

    I had other Houston area school administrators looking over my shoulder — it was a “shock and awe” moment… awe over the technology, shock over the ease of use and low-cost of equipment.

    I wrote up my reflections on the past few weeks of these kinds of “transformative experiences” that we have had with Google Presentations and Ustream — http://www.ed421.com/?p=356

    This is significant and very transformative. As I said a few days ago in a “tweet” — this changes the game.

    Stephanie