By Christopher Hosford

Predictions that webcasting would be “the next big thing” are as old as the technology itself. So why are most meeting planners still avoiding it?

After all, there are some new and innovative uses of webcasting, dramatically extending the reach of meetings and even generating revenue for event organizers. A webcast scheduled for last week’s National Association of Broadcasters convention has drawn national attention for its innovations.

And some groups, in particular medical associations and religious organizations, have discovered webcasting to be particularly suited to their missions. Webcasting at medical conferences enables procedures to be filmed and disseminated for months after they originally occurred, while a number of larger churches have webcast sermons and conferences as a logical form of evangelical outreach.

And, with the passage of fair-disclosure legislation four years ago that makes webcasting a virtually unanimous choice for distributing earnings news, almost every public company in America has at least some experience with the technology.

And yet, webcasting — video and audio, or sometimes just audio, delivered to a viewer’s computer over the Internet, either live or on-demand at a later date — has largely failed to break into the mainstream as a commonly used, exciting component of the meeting planner’s bag of tricks.

“There is no question that every conference organizer thinks about how to take his great content and reproduce it at very little or no extra cost,” said Dan Rayburn, executive vice president of New York-based Streaming Media Inc. “Some sell audio tapes or DVDs, for example.

“But not as many are taking advantage of streaming media technology as they should,” said Rayburn, whose company provides webcasting services, reports on the industry via its website, streamingmedia.com, and holds two conventions a year on the topic.

“I speak at a lot of conferences every year, and I can’t even see my own keynote online afterwards. Why?”

Some planners may shy away from webcasting because it seems newfangled and technologically complex. Others may fear that “broadcasting” their conferences or keynotes on the Internet would decrease their live attendance.

“Planners have said to me, ‘If I webcast this, nobody will come to my meeting,’ ” said John Rody, head of Dallas-based Webcasting.com. “But actually it is an opportunity to involve people who can’t get to the meeting. A planner should appreciate the fact that, while he had 400 people in the ballroom, he had 1,500 more people over 90 days watching the presentation online. And with its wow factor, many of those viewers will attend the meeting next year.”

Still, there remains a disconnect. For example, according to Patrick Sarcinella, Orlando-based director of technology services with telecommunications company Smart City, headquartered in Las Vegas, the number of webcasts his company wires annually at the Orange County Convention Center has remained static for the past three years.

Meeting Professionals International also has tracked the moribund state of webcasting’s acceptance. In MPI’s most recent FutureWatch poll of the meetings industry, suppliers said they expected their technological investment to grow or stay the same in every single category, except one — teleconferencing, a category that includes webcasting.

Teleconferencing budgets have dropped two years in a row, said the MPI respondents.

But that’s not the case at Caterpillar Inc., the $20 billion heavy machinery manufacturer based in Peoria, Ill. The company is exploring all its streaming-media options, thanks to its longtime program manager, Gus Otto.

Otto, who was named one of the top IT leaders in the world by ComputerWorld magazine in 2001, has used webcasting as an internal communications tool for about three years. In March, he set up the company’s first external webcast, at the ConExpo–Con/Agg show at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and the experience has made him even more of a believer in the technology.

Extending An Event’s Reach

“When our CEO, Jim Owens, announced a new philosophy called Team Caterpillar, my line of thought was, let’s look at all the Caterpillar dealers in the world who won’t be able to attend the ConExpo show. And there also are employees who have worked here for years and haven’t seen what takes place at these shows,” said Otto.

Caterpillar set up four webcasts inside and outside the Las Vegas Convention Center, two covering the product display areas, and two showing the company’s products in action outside.

“I’m telling you, it was overwhelming,” Otto said. “We averaged 13,000 online views a day from people outside the company, and we didn’t even do any advertising. It was all word of mouth.”

In addition to potential customers viewing Caterpillar products online, the in-house response was remarkable, Otto said. The number of Caterpillar employees viewing the webcasts almost brought the company’s Internet network to a halt.

Smart City, the nation’s largest provider of event technology, handled the wiring for Caterpillar, and Las Vegas-based iStreamPlanet set up the webcast.

That duo also was scheduled to handle a groundbreaking event on April 20 at the annual convention of the National Association of Broadcasters, in Las Vegas. A keynote address by high-definition TV pioneer Mark Cuban was webcast from the show on a pay-per-view basis. It will continue to be available on-demand until May 20.

Using special software that includes only paying viewers, iStreamPlanet says this was the first-ever secure, pay-per-view webcast.

(Streaming Media’s Rayburn isn’t a fan of pay-per-view webcasts. He believes the value of webcasting resides more in its promotional effects, driving customers to next year’s live event.)

Price Versus Impact

Alex Khaira, vice president of sales for iStreamPlanet, said the cost of webcasting depends on the length of the broadcasts and the number of viewers, but can begin at about $2,000 for the basics. But he estimates that if a million people watched the Mark Cuban speech, the technological needs could have set NAB back some $250,000.

Thus, by structuring the Cuban event as pay-per-view — pegged at $2.95 per viewing customer — NAB may be wishing to recoup some of its webcasting costs.

For more typical needs, Expo magazine has estimated a price of about $13,000 for a package that include production for three keynote speeches of one hour each, audio taping of 27 conference sessions, a searching capability, and on-demand availability for 60 days afterwards. Wiring would be extra.

“But the experience of your meeting is extended for months, long after people go home,” said Webcasting.com’s Rody. “And at the end of the day, the meeting planner will have provided his client with a much more wow experience.

“And what’s wrong with that?”