Junice Savares, our web developer and multimedia specialist, was the picture of concentration as her eyes moved swiftly from one screen to the next. She had radio broadcaster Buzz Bishop on live from Calgary and a series of pre-recorded videos lined up ready to go.
It was Sunday, September 27 and Diabetes Canada was already broadcasting its first ever virtual Lace Up event via Facebook Live. Junice was at the controls and everything was going perfectly.
It’s always a rush doing a live event. Doing a national live event for the first time using a new set of tools generated extra excitement at our company. For the past few weeks, we were working with Diabetes Canada to prepare for the Lace Up celebration, which had been moved online due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Junice has considerable video production experience in addition to her expertise as a web developer, so she was the perfect person to run the show. She had both the creative and technical skills to bring everything together.
We received dozens of individual videos from the client featuring entertainers as well as clips of individual fundraisers around the country. Our job was to stitch these videos together in post-production. We applied colour, light and sound correction and added Diabetes Canada branded elements.
Once that was all done, it was time to prep for the live production. Using our livestreaming platform, we were seamlessly able to integrate Buzz’s live emcee feed from Calgary and broadcast it live on Facebook.
While Junice was running the virtual control room from our offices in Winnipeg, we were also in constant contact with Diabetes Canada helping them with comment moderation and advising them of how the show was progressing.
One of the reasons for success is our team’s focus on testing and retesting in the lead up to the event. We put in extra hours to make sure everything was going to run smoothly.
Within a few hours, the video had been seen more than 1,200 times and more than 2,300 times within a few days of the original broadcast.
Entertainers included George Canyon, Chris Ryan and the Gamblers. Other video segments included a delicious cooking demonstration with Laurie Barker Jackman of Sobeys and a fitness segment with Andrew Kleinsasser of Fitness to Go.
It was a great way for Diabetes Canada to celebrate a highly successful event that raised more than $150,000.
As well as that show went, we’re already hard at work on the next one for Diabetes Canada. It will be another national livestream event and our team is looking to add new production qualities to enhance engagement even more.
If you’re interested in learning how livestreaming can help your business connect with your audience during COVID, drop us a line.
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