Webcasting with Mediasite Is Like Skiing the Birkie on a Great Set of Skis

As is usual this time of year in Madison, we woke up to about 4 or 5 inches of fresh snow. After I quickly cleared the driveway and sidewalk with my ancient-but-reliable Ariens, I was able to get out to the XC ski trails to do a few loops before my kids were even awake. As I was focusing on my technique, I got to thinking about Mediasite. (No, seriously!) Let me explain.

Birkie photo via flickr, the cc license of BarryD - thanks

You see, I’m training for the Birkie – a 50k XC ski race. As with any endurance race, you spend a lot of time trying to minimize the amount of effort while maximizing the results of that effort – you’re in it for the long haul, so to speak. Besides your general level of health and fitness, two critical components combine to allow you the best possible results for your efforts:

1. Your technique
2. Your tools

It’s like that with webcasting too. Solid webcasting techniques can make a huge impact on the quality of your presentations. (You can brush up on your techniques with our webcast on how to create a high quality multimedia presentation). But technique alone will not necessarily get you the results you need.

When you ski a long race, you want to minimize the amount of energy you need for every move otherwise you may not be able to finish the race. It’s the same with large scale webcasting. The more presentations you capture, the more events you stream, the more rooms you configure for rich media, the more you want to minimize the amount of effort required.

My friend worked at a ski shop. Last year he set me up with the best set of skis I could afford. And every time I hit the trails for a race or a longer training session, my body thanks me. The combination of good technique (I won’t say “great” just yet) and excellent tools makes (most) every session a joy. I don’t even have to think about my poles, my boots, or my skis – they are doing everything they are supposed to – almost going unnoticed.

Again, that’s what Mediasite does. Quietly performs all the tasks you need without forcing you to be overly involved. The ease-of-use of the recorders, the automation of scheduling, the straightforward workflows supported by the management side, the convenience of monitoring rooms from a central location – all of these combine to enable the delivery of exceptional results without exceptional effort.

For those of you considering lecture capture or streaming multimedia presentations, one of the first questions you may want to ask about potential solutions is this:

Will this tool get me to the finish line…over and over again?

Mediasite will.