This year for the first time, John and I have done something new at VMworld. We created a public-access type online streaming channel on Livecast and opened it up to the VMware community, i.e. you.
When you do things you’ve never done before, there is a lot of learning to do, and you can’t know in advance whether it will work at all. Looking back, I have to say, the Community TV idea worked, and worked amazingly well.
We were going to broadcast every day that VMworld had its doors open, from 10am to 3pm, meaning that we had to fill five slots each day. John built an online form for people to request their time slots, and a week before the event our schedule was full.
We packed our video setup in a big shipping container and off it went to the Sands Expo in Las Vegas. Once there, we unpacked and set up the studio in the Community Lounge, which was in the green Hang Space, right next to the big screen with all the social media updates scrolling by.
I have to say that I have worked at more shows than I care to remember, and this one was by far the most pleasant to work at. The many live green plants and the artificial lawn created a very inviting and stress-free atmosphere, and people tended to linger in the Hang Space just to relax and have a break from an otherwise bustling show.
Our speakers truly blew me away by their punctuality and preparedness, and also their many great ideas for the hourly streaming podcast. We had interviews, product demonstrations, roundtable discussions, and everything inbetween.
In four days, we have streamed and recorded 21 videos, which were viewed by more than 8.5 thousand people. 34,000 total streams were watched for a total of almost 4,000 hours.
If you missed any (or all—gasp!) of these streaming videos, you can still catch them in our livestream.com/vmwarecommunitytv channel. Enjoy, and see you live from Copenhagen!
