Help Me Create a Live Video / Audio Stream for our Company Meeting?

April 25, 2008 9:44 AM

How do I broadcast a video or audio announcement to our remote employees?

The last Friday of the month we have an in-office happy hour. Before the drinking get rolling, we have about ten minutes of company announcements.

My boss would like me to broadcast these announcements live to our 6 remote employees. Are there any web services that would accommodate this? That would create a public stream?

Are there any cameras in particular you can recommend? I have some time to dash off to Best Buy.

Also, I don't know if this helps, but I have a Rock Band USB microphone that I am willing to use as a Plan B if I can't get video streaming to work. Or simply to complement the camera which might not capture audio so well in our loud conference room.

posted by jmprice to technology (5 comments total)

While still only 'an experiment', you can't get much simpler and quicker than Yahoo Live. You'll need a Yahoo account, a webcam with audio or a DV camera connected to your machine.
posted by bryanzera at 9:59 AM on April 25, 2008

If I was doing this I would make a recording of the announcements in advance and transmit them to the remote employees, to be played during whatever time.

One unanswered question: are the remote employees all in one place, or spread out in 6 different locations?
posted by DMan at 10:24 AM on April 25, 2008

I've been impressed with what I've seen of WiZiQ so far - I took part in a practice session using it recently and it seemed to work fairly smoothly. And it's free.
posted by shelbaroo at 10:30 AM on April 25, 2008

Youtube?
posted by neuron at 1:35 PM on April 25, 2008

Definitely check out Kyte, which allows you to broadcast publicly using webcam or even your mobile phone and get it streamed directly to standard widgets, including ones for Facebook and MySpace. You can just put these widgets on your company intranet and it should work well.

/SML
posted by seeminglee at 1:42 PM on April 25, 2008