Donovan Lambright, Automation Librarian

Last week, the website News provided a few links and information on the Smart Money Connections project.  Today, I'd like to expand a bit on the live webcast portion of the program.

Immediately after each live television program concludes, we will fire up our webcam for another 30 minutes of conversation on the evening's topic.  This webcast will differ from the program in two ways:
1)  As the name implies, it will be available solely over the web
2)  Anyone on the internet can participate in the conversation

Those who visit the Smart Money Connections video page will find a window with the live video stream and a chatroom.  No login is required, visitors can simply start chatting.  The webpage will assign each visitor a generic username and his/her comments will immediately appear.  The chatroom moderator, yours truly, will pick questions from the room and pass them on to the program hosts and guests.  This is SELCO's first venture into the realm of live webcasting and I'm both excited and nervous.  We did a dry run this morning to prepare for the first program this Wednesday.  Once we got everything positioned it worked perfectly.  We're as ready as we're going to get.

While this post explains what we're going to do, there is no subsitute for seeing it with your own eyes.  There are two ways of viewing the webcast and chat:
1)  The Smart Money Connections video page
2)  Our program page at www.ustream.tv, the free webcasting service we are using

The content will be the same regardless of which page you use.  If you go to the ustream page now, however, you can view the recording of our testing this morning.  It's pretty rough and casual; at various times in the recording we are silly, perplexed, serious, and finally triumphant.  The video locks up a few times when we got a little too busy moving around and messing with the lights (there's only so much a webcam can handle).  Once we get through the first program this week, we'll probably take this "rough draft" down.  But in the meantime, it's up as a sneak preview of what to expect on Wednesday the 13th.

See you on the web!