Simon on: Periscope - friend or foe for meetings?

Twitter’s acquisition of the live video streaming app, Periscope earlier this year seems to have caused quite a fuss within the industry – so I thought I should explore the facts.

I recently attended a presentation on the subject, where the speaker was adamant that the industry ‘must take the step with hybrid meetings.’ 

Hybrid events have been with us since the 1970s. The vast majority of events are now using video to engage a virtual audience and so should therefore be described as ‘hybrid’. The practise is in fact so commonplace that we need to lose the term ‘hybrid’ and start calling these events, simply, ‘events’.

Rant over, Periscope and its live streaming capabilities is a gimmick that I haven’t yet fathomed a tangible use for - especially when you consider that YouTube launched its own live streaming channel back in 2008, and look at the impact that had on the industry.

There are two possible avenues to take; the official route whereby organisers use it to stream live footage of their event, and the non-official use by members of the audience. 

Savvy organisers will not spend money on anything unless it enhances their event and I can’t see how live streaming will do that. It’s too late to use it to attract more delegates and it’s a fair-sized investment in time and money just to ‘create a social buzz’. 

Some people may bemoan that delegate use will flout privacy and copyright issues but the tools to film an event have been in audiences’ hands since the first smartphone was launched in 2005, yet we don’t see many delegates filming then posting conference content on YouTube. 

There are other drawbacks too. Periscope is currently only viewable on a smartphone – so is a delegate really going to watch an entire conference (or even one whole session) on a tiny screen? And videos created via Periscope disappear after 24 hours, so anyone who misses the original broadcast may miss out on the meeting entirely.

For those championing the idea of driving awareness through the app – if you saw a snippet of a meeting’s content online, would you really remember it and be inspired to attend the following year? Probably not. 

But if the organisers filmed the event, posted it on YouTube and used all their channels to promote it throughout the year, then maybe it may influence you.

Before we all get excited about this new shiny tool, let’s use the tools we already have to much better effect.

Originally published in M&IT