Recently, we had our first live stream for Project14 which was pretty exciting. In addition to live streams for Project14, I will also begin doing some more traditional webinars with suppliers. The first time around with any initiative is always a learning experience. One reason for doing live streams is to introduce a new way to engage around your electronics projects and let's face it, video is really exciting. Especially, with anything technical, you can produce something that is informative, entertaining, and let's you learn without knowing that you are learning! The way we look at Project14 live streams is the same way we look at the regular monthly competitions. This is a by members, for members program. We want your voice to be heard with everything that we do. I've reached out to a few of a members, following the first live stream, about coming on as presenters around the theme of our next live stream, robotics. As we get some logistics settled, I'd like to invite more members to join than we did last time.
A concern about having community members come on as presenters for live streams was/is, its a little trickier to schedule dry runs in advance, and of course, what if something goes wrong. For the most part, think things worked pretty good with having multiple presenters and would definitely like to try having more members, the next time around.
Having viewed the live stream, it came out better than expected:
In keeping with the program, the live stream is, albeit loosely, based around a theme. Right now, we're piloting this initiative. But should this become a successful part of the program, and we decide we need to increment another live stream around Home Automation, we put an Episode number at the end (just like in Star Wars)! In this instance, we chose home automation. As far as the show & tells from the community members, they had freedom to use their slot however they like, as long as it revolved around electronics projects. For the next live stream, MATRIX labs will be returning, but we'd like to set the stage for more guests to use this platform to connect with each other, and have engaging conversations around electronics projects. The next theme we will do will be around Robotics, in keeping with our birthday celebration, Month of Robots . We'll try and fit at least 3 segments into the event, and work around members schedules (the toughest part), and hopefully line something up for after the live stream. We've also talked about having even more than 3 community members join in as panelists to go along with the presenters.
Here are some questions that we would love to hear feedback about regarding Project14:
- Should we have a round table with just community members?
- Should we focus more on special guests?
- Should we focus more on the Show & Tell Segments?
- What is the ideal length of a live stream (should we make them shorter or should we go the full time allowed)?
- What's missing?
- What would you do differently?
We will be doing a lot in the community around webinars/live streams, not just with this program. Ideally, if we're going to make live streams a part of the Project14 we want to make this whatever you want it to be. At this point we haven't been given any specific directives about what this should be. We would like to shape this initiative to be whatever you want it to be.
