Webcasting project background

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This is early background information on the webcasting project. It is current as of January, 2005. Project flexibility allowed us to shape our plans as we progressed to generate the most value.

Webcasting CoP - Online Community of Practice

A new online exchange dedicated to sharing experiences, ideas, and how-to knowledge among those on the front lines of public sector webcasting.

To join this online community, please complete this simple webcasting and multimedia community of practice registration form. The community will start with a private e-mail list and expand into use of this wiki and other web tools.

Membership is open to staff in public sector organizations and to those who provide webcasting and multimedia services to governments, universities, and other other public sector institutions.

Among other things, we will be planning a major one week online-only Public Sector and Communities Webcasting E-Conference. The community of practice will have its official "Grand Opening" with the conference.

Enhanced Webcasting Specification

During a visit, officials involved with UK local government were extremely impressed with the enhanced webcasting service provided by the Minnesota House of Representatives (view enhanced versions of floor sessions for example).

In short, the Minnesota House provides contextual links and content within a special window that includes the video. While it is built on top of the database driven legislative document system, it illustrates how any local council might connect a content management system with public meeting documents (agendas, handouts, etc.) with both their live and archived video streaming.

The Enhanced Webcasting Specification and our page with links comparing webcasting format options help articulate a vision for meaningful webcasting of government meetings. We've determined that our budget and time available make a demonstration of the high-end video-focused less valuable. Instead we are exploring a working prototype of an open source audio-focused system we are calling Democaster. The reality is that most small public meetings will never justify the case for professional quality video production, but that does not mean that audio with decent sound quality should not be webcast along with contextual "enhanced" information distributed at the meeting. With audio, the opportunity for government podcasting also emerges.

This initiative is supported by the UK Local E-democracy National Project and coordinated by Steven Clift.

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