The
broadcast was a joint effort of the Office of Converging Technologies
and the Office of the Provost. Spearheaded by Eric Shamow,
Asst.
Director for UNIX and Educational Technologies, who had initiated
the streaming video infrastructure required to produce the webcast,a dedicated band of employees was assembled to make the webcast possible.
Eric enlisted the help of Casey Williams, one of
OCT's support technicians. Having extensive video experience, Casey
took it on himself to act as the video director of the event.
A three-camera set-up with a mixing deck was established. In a matter
of weeks, Casey turned three of OCT's staff, Jennifer Chow,
Sergio Cruz and Markus Erndl, into
videographers. With the invaluable help of Onkei An,
this was the team that brought us the commencement webcast. A tent
was set up to the left of the commencement stage where Eric, laptop
in hand,acting as webcast technical director, and Casey, as video
director, controlled the images seen. Reminiscent of the 1950s "Golden
Age" of Television, we saw it live as it was happening with no
time for retakes or editing.
The webcast is now availabe for viewing. To see what happened that
day, go to http://www.qc.edu/commencement.html.
College members who contributed to the event were Donna Lipper,
Asst. Vice President of Information Technology, Dr.
Kenneth Lord of the Office of the Provost, Lois
Bianchi of Journalism for the loan of media equipment, and
Joseph Brostek, director of Alumni Affairs and Special
Events.
Some Interesting Statistics:
The
webcast was seen live by 188 visitors to the Queens College web site.
The average visitor watched for 8 minutes and 48 seconds.
Of the 188 visitors, 164 were from the U.S., 10 from Malaysia, 8 from
Europe , 3 from Canada, 1 from Pakistan, 1 from Cyprus, 1 from Egypt,
2 from China, and 1 from Australia.The majority of connections were
made during the second hour of the broadcast,
when there were as many as 88 connections.
Most of the connections were from off-campus! 104 of our visitors
originated from off-campus, and 84 were from on-campus. This means
that we likely reached our target audience of family and parents unable
to attend the commencement.
OCT
and the Office of the Provost are also in the process of planning
the in-house training seminars for Fall 2003. Our next issue of TechTalk
should have detailed information on what will be taught and how to
register.
