For a number of reasons — most of which are rather boring — I’ve decided to make the CMEpalooza website the main viewing area for the live streaming presentations next week (wait…next week? Next week?!? Already it’s next week?  Yikes.) What this means is that I’ve added a new page to the website, not-so-cleverly named “LIVE“, where participants can go to watch all the presentations as they’re happening. Previously, I had been instructing everyone to go to the CMEpalooza Google+ page to watch the presentations. This is still true and you can watch the presentations there if you wish, but after doing a little experimenting, I think having a dedicated webpage to watch the presentations will make for the easiest viewing experience.

Here are a few things to keep in mind for the live presentations:

• Each presentation is streamed separately. It is not one long streaming video throughout the day. When the first presentation is finished, the video feed you are watching will end. There will be a delay of a few minutes while I get the second presentation set-up. You will need to refresh your page to see the next video feed. Once you see it on your screen, just hit the play button again and wait for the presentation to start. We will try to start every presentation as close to the scheduled start time as possible. We will not start early, so if one presenter finishes early, we will wait for the scheduled time to start the next presentation.
• To send in questions during the presentations, click on the Q&A link that shows up at the bottom of the video. This will open the video in a new window that includes both the video and the ability to ask questions. You need to have a Google/Gmail login in order to ask questions.
• YOU DO NOT NEED TO HAVE A GOOGLE+ OR GMAIL ACCOUNT TO WATCH THE LIVE PRESENTATIONS (can you tell that’s the questionI get asked the most?)
• Yes, all the presentations will be archived for later viewing…unless I screw something up

As part of the prep leading up to the first day of the big event, I have requested that each of the CMEpalooza presenters go through a quick Google+ Hangout training session with me, just to try and work out any potential glitches. I have done seven of them so far and have learned a few important lessons:

1. After trying a variety of techniques, I have decided that the easiest way to communicate the Hangout location to the presenters is to simply email a direct link to them. As much as I despise email, it’s the one form of electronic communication that most people, regardless of how tech savvy they are, seem capable of handling without assistance. I realized fairly quickly that asking each presenter to go to their individual Google+ page and wait for a Hangout invitation to come wasn’t going to cut it. Too confusing. But, I can get a Hangout started, email the presenter(s) the link and all they have to do is click the link and they’re automatically directed to the Hangout. Thus far, this technique has been working reasonably well (side note: it works even better if you email your presenter the correct link, a lesson I learned the hard way…)
2. Continuing with the “Google+ pages are confusing” theme, I’m having second thoughts about having the CMEpalooza Google+ page as the main place for participants to watch the live presentations. Now that I’ve had a little more experience with it, I’m concerned that the Google+ experience/environment might be a little too disconcerting for those who are new to it (which I’ll guess will be the large majority of the “audience”). I’m now leaning towards adding a page to the CMEpalooza website – call is “CMEpalooza Live”, maybe? – and embedding the live video directly on it. When one session ends and the next one is preparing to start, I delete out the old video from the “CMEpalooza Live” page and add the new one. That way, participants can stay on the same page and only have one thing to look at on that page. They only need to refresh their screen to see the next live presentation. Participants will still be able to watch via the Google+ page if they prefer – they’re available there automatically.
3. It is a good system, but not a perfect system. The video and/or audio quality can waver depending on the presenter’s computer or webcam or internet connection or headphones or any number of other factors. However, my goal for CMEpalooza is not to be perfect. I’d be happy with “pretty good” and satisfied with “not bad”. Just because a presenter’s audio isn’t perfectly synched with their video doesn’t mean they can’t be learned from. And as I keep reminding myself, no one has paid anything for this, including me, so I can live with a little imperfection.
4. I am now 99% sure that I can actually pull this off. That’s pretty good considering I was at about 50% when I first started.

As the title states, this video was created to give presenters a quick demo of what to expect at CMEpalooza. I thought it might be of interest to others as well, which is why I’m posting it here.

Note: I used Screenr to create this and accidentally had my recording window a bit too low. It’s not a big deal, except at the very end of the video where one of the things I’m talking about is sort of cut-off. I could have recorded it again, but, meh….