Do conference videos still work?
It’s one of the questions I am asking myself, after seeing a huge drop in view counts all around the web. Most conferences are impacted, and it seems we are entering a new era where audiences are getting saturated of good content. Yes, because that is change number one: online videos do not mean crap anymore. Check the best talks of Lift, TED, Leweb, Picnic, all offer fantastic performances by some of the world best speakers.
Back in 2006, when Lift was one of the first conference to publish its content online free (people thought I was crazy back then, “killing the need to attend”), we would get ten of thousands of views on the talks of Scoble, Cory Doctorow or Bruce Sterling. Years later, a great talk gets 5000 views, like Queen Rania’s recent speech at Leweb, Gunter Pauli at Lift France 09 or Kevin Kelly at TEDxAmsterdam. A notable exception is TED, getting between 10 and 20′000 views on their videos thanks to the talent and hard work of the team led by Jason Wishnow, who edits all the talks (one to two per week) to make them as impactful as possible.
Vint Cerf at Lift09, one of my favorite Lift talk.
Still, you can see a change there. Look at TED’s most popular talks: most date from two to three years ago. Yes they had more time to be seen, and that might explain the difference in view count. But we are comparing millions to thousands. There is a clear drop here too, even if the numbers remain above the pack.
So what happened? Maybe:
- Audiences are offered a huge choice, and almost all conferences are now sharing their talks online. It is harder to stand out, and great content gets buried under the constant flow of information.
- The way views are counted has improved. I learned ten days ago from Julien Hory that Dailymotion counts a view only after a couple of minutes, a time determined as the average viewing time on the site. Before you reach that mark, your view does not count. Cruel, we are not used to this, but it probably gives a much better view of reality.
- Conferences are now spreading their videos on many platforms (Lift is on DailyMotion, Vimeo, Blip, Metacafe, Revver and Viddler to name a few), and the consolidated numbers are simply not available.
- Are 20 minutes talks too long? The average video length on Youtube is 2 minutes 46.17 seconds, we are used to shorter, more impactful content while online.
Overall, I raise this question because shooting videos at conferences is a huge investment (around 100′000$ for Lift), and I wonder if videos are still the smartest way to use that money. We could do so much (dinners, parties, gifts) with that money the question at least needs to be raised.
Another question is the one of live streaming the conference. Loic and Géraldine Lemeur got 200′000 people watching the live stream, much more than on the archived videos of this year’s edition. With time, the difference might become smaller - with the archive catching up on the live - but the gap is pretty impressive. Audiences seem to want to content now, not later. And they are the ones calling the shots. Time to evolve again?
Hum, that will be one interesting chapter for the book on conferences I am starting with the help of 30 (and counting) of the most innovative conference organizers around.
December 23rd, 2009 at 1:00 pm
The conference videos, either from TED or from LIFT are essential to spreading the word. With the videos, I can show people the calibre of talks, and they find it much easier to imagine the vibe of attending.
For me, having the videos available for download from the talks I enjoyed most is an important part of the experience.
December 23rd, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Laurent,
You raise an interesting point.
Unfortunately, many conference organisers do not seem to have a solid grounding in either new or traditional communication principles. It often feels like augmentatitve measures (such as live streaming with q & a functionality) are simply bolted onto existing formats (such as a 40 minute plenary with 10 minutes Q & A). And, why would they? Organisers who’ve apprenticed on the principle of events being mainly logistics oriented will see the picture from that perspective.
You raise an entirely valid point about video length online. The temptation to host presentations in their entirety must be a real attraction to organisers for two reasons. One, it’s easily done. Two, their events are viewed by some as progressive and embracing of new technologies.
From experience, it does feel like the corporate sector is beginning to shift its event formatting a little. I’m absolutely in no doubt this is in part down to influence from the tech sector.
A small peeve I have with some parts of the PCO/PEO community. The expression ‘Experiential Events’ is way over-used. It connotes an experience that is all encompassing when invariably is just a new way of describing events generally. Grrrr….
Nice post. Good to see someone questioning the status quo.
Cheers,
Matt
BTW, here’s a video (1m30s) i’m using to promote a theatrical/cabaret/workshopping formula to clients at the moment. Just meeting someone today to discuss using some of the techniques as part of a marketing campaign.
http://www.modcommslimited.com/blog/2009/12/carry-on-up-the-network-video/
December 23rd, 2009 at 8:57 pm
one idea would be to do less/shorter videos & use some funds to make the conference carbon neutral? maybe it already is! not sure how expensive that would be. :)
December 23rd, 2009 at 9:00 pm
We’re already working to be carbon neutral: http://liftconference.com/compensating-lift09
December 23rd, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Looks like you’re getting your TED numbers from youtube. But by far the majority of our views are on http://ted.com Almost all the talks we post end up getting more than 100k views. Pranav Mistry, who was only posted a month ago, is already through 2 million. Overall, more than 400k TED talks are being viewed every day. This is more than double the number of a year ago. We’re in awe that the web audience is willing to sit through 18 minutes… and then forward the link. This wasn’t expected!
December 23rd, 2009 at 11:41 pm
TED is the exception confirming the rule - even more than I thought (congrats :) - and it strengthens one of the point I was raising: that views are spread on different platforms which means a lot of intelligence escapes. It’s a shame we can’t consolidate the numbers across platform, with YouTube not benefiting from the social intelligence of TED.com where millions of people have voted with their eyes for a certain talk.
December 24th, 2009 at 12:13 am
TED and lift talks became an essential part of my morning routine. The lenght (20-40 mins) is just fine to get insights and inspiration. I forward and tweet about the talks a lot, so live coverage is not that important imho, I really need VOD. Keep up the good work (and videos!).
December 26th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Hi Laurent,
Thanks for posing the question. Lets look at this the other way around. How about finding a cheaper way to produce the videos in the first place? The 30+ videos we’re producing of the International Conference on Crisis Mapping (ICCM) cost us less than $1,000 in total (which includes video animation, soundtrack, editing, etc.):
http://www.crisismappers.net/video
Maybe try leveraging the LIFT community (and beyond) to have folks volunteer their time and expertise? I’m sure there are budding film students out there who would love to be part of the magic and LIFT could be their first break, so you’d be doing good that way too. That’s what Jen and I did with ICCM.
In any case, I agree with the above comments, the videos are integral to spreading the word. On streaming, I for one don’t always have the time to watch an event live online. So putting the videos online a few days after the conference and rolling them out over time allows folks the freedom to watch when we want. This also allows us to edit the videos, make them shorter, etc. Providing a “table of contents” per video may be another way to go so folks can just jump to specific points of interest. Finding other creative ways to drive traffic to the videos is also worth considering. So what if it’s not as “automatic” as before.
I totally agree that we should consolidate view counts across platforms. The vote counts are important user-generated content and sign-posts. I’m no software developer but imagine it can’t be too hard to write a few scripts that pull in counts from other websites and aggregates them on the LIFT (or TED) website. Asking YouTube to do the same might be trickier. But they don’t have to add that the majority of view counts for a certain video comes from Vimeo, for example. They could just have one figure that denotes number of times a video has been viewed on dozens of platforms across the web. This number may actually compel more users to watch the videos right there/then on YouTube, which may be of appeal to the company.
Thanks again for posing the question!
December 27th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
thanks for above link–that is great! :)
December 28th, 2009 at 11:36 am
@Patrick: most of the costs can hardly be taken down. Team of 10 people working for 3 days, heavy duty cameras and sound system, lighting (around 20k…), stage decoration, post production, encoding, meta-data addition, spreading, promotion, etc… The last part of the process could certainly be outsourced to the community - and maybe to the speakers themselves? But I’m afraid that would create quite a few management challenges: making sure 40 people coordinate might be more work than doing it ourselves.
But there is certainly something that can be done there, and we’ll look out for people willing to help us with the videos.
December 29th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Nice post Laurent.
I believe long videos aren’t, any longer, adapted to the way people use computer based internet. “In the old days” when it took forever to load, you’d see the video through (whilst maybe loading another).
Today you view streaming video strait from click one. So flipping to something else after a few seconds is just natural (just like on TV). There are so many apples to pick and the reach is ever easier.
I have the impression that mobile devices may be a good bet as to where “long conference videos” will be ever more viewed (or at least listened to whilst driving your car, in the sub or gardening…).
For a start you often have your mobile phone when waiting for somthing, somebody, to get somewhere or simply in a room. So you actually have time (once you’re done browsing your mails, twitter etc) you are ready to fill in.
Secondly, the loading of a video is still slow enough to want to “reap from the effort”. Most important the video takes the whole screen so you’re less tempted to look at something else… Well sort of :). Anyway if you are driving you can’t really switch and a nice 20 minute talk is appreciated.
I have found the Lift iPhone app and its good. The problem, for the time being is that a video cannot be downloaded without a Wifi connection… (would you believe it I don’t even have one in my car…). That has to do with the iPhone of course (not the app).
All that to say that: yes there is nearly too much good info out there… given the available time we have to view it. But there are new available time spaces opening up with the mobile devices and, as soon as the loading issues are solved, I believe the audience will be back.
You probably already know this but it is interesting to note that the most podcasted french program is “2000 ans d’histoire” (translates: 2000 years of history) and it lasts 30 minutes every day from monday to friday.
December 29th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Get a Ford and you’ll have wifi next year: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/21/next-gen-ford-sync-adding-wifi-hotspot-capabilities-you-provide/