We were so well received by these pastors. It was a real treat for us to serve them coffee and spend time learning of their needs and help them with the Social Technologies that will keep their congregations plugged-in. We had a raffle for a Kindle, external hard drive, and a few other electronic items that Pastors would not ordinarily buy on their own.
Our presence was to enlighten the churches awareness and importance of social media tools such as email marketing, Live Streaming Services, and how they can implement them to attract the much needed younger members to keep the church fresh and active. YourHost.com understands that Streaming is a key element for Church and Church planters, like Newbreed who we support, a proponent of growth needs the Youth for growth. The youth is actively online. Our First Church plant Stream setup for $1,500 (camera, computer, monitor) first step, was Pastor Mark Convoy, Calvary Flagler Beach, Florida.
Today, you will never attract people to your church by expecting them to walk in the door. The use of Social Media to have an ongoing conversation with both the Youth and the 40 something and above using Facebook and Twitter so they can connect their, kids, grand kids, and the church via Live Streaming.
Live Streaming allows a people to anonymously to check out the church, its pastor, and sermons all about without stepping foot in the door. If they like what they hear, they might ask friends or online questions, or even walk through that door. (keep the conversation going). Think about the viral and networking impact by virtually reaching out to the sick, injured, and spiritual needy by Live streaming into the home, to any Country. One of our most Socially active and successful Churches is Calvary Chapel, Lexington South Carolina, Pastor John Hoppe, and brilliantly Webmastered by media director, Joe Scott.
YourHost.com was invited to the Yearly 2010 Pastors Conference, hosted by Calvary Chapel Outreach Fellowship.
The experience was a treat on our team, partly because we were able to fellowship with pastors to enlighten them on how YourHost.com understands the “Church Culture”, as it relates to Technology and their daily technical challenges.
YourHost.com got Pastors attention when we told them we can make the process painless, quick, and cost effective when it came to Live and Video On Demand (VOD) streaming in the time it takes to setup a self-managed account, for at little as $50/mo. .
Eric Kirkhuff, Matt Kotich, Chris Duffy, and Nathan Wing were present who were able to present how YourHost.com’s 13 years of Internet experience could painlessly offer Streaming, Ecommerce, and Web Design to churches.
Adding to YourHost.com offerings we introduced the implementation of Digital Rapids TouchStream system, along with our JW automated Player generator, that makes it painless, quick, simple to get online in under 15 minutes.
See photos of the Ipad, ITouch, and HD Camera Winners and become a fan of our YourHost.com’s Facebook page
I took the 5 hour drive to the NAB Conference in Las Vegas and spent the day with our CTO, Matt Kotich, Wednesday April 14th. Was it worth it? You bet. My goal was to look for new tools, services, and tips that our streaming customers could benefit from. I looked forward to connecting face-to-face with our virtual alliance partners, Digital Rapids and Mobile Media Devices.
My personal thanks to Brent Ross and the Digital Rapids team along with Darryl Spangler of Mobile Media Devices and it was great meeting them. When a company looks for a relationship with another company they look at how well they support not only their customers but their channel. Digital Rapids does both extremely well.
D-R (Digital Rapids) has recently announced and embraced the IPhone and other Smart Phones streaming challenges. It uses a progressive http Get from any CDN (HighWinds from YourHost.com).
D-R has made the codec that will accommodate VOD streaming to IPhones. Using the Touch Stream system you need to make profiles for 4 files to for each speed and phone type and your good. It is adaptive technology. This format includes a solution for the IPad which actually has a higher resolution to accommodate the larger and Hi res screen.
The Touch Stream Live Streaming box is a great tool and companies and groups are choosing this tool in as a cost effective alternative to the Stream Z , which is an awesome box, not portable. They choose the TS system in order to cover the ability to be portable or to have the ability to be portable as their needs evolved in the future.
In the D-R booth, I watched many people who appeared to have a good grasp on video and broadcasting, struggling to grasp the basic streaming concepts and implementations of projects, bobs, and various streaming parameters that are available when setting up streams. If you are familiar with Sorenson Squeeze, it will be a breeze to grasp. This tells me that the field is wide open and the public need companies like the Official Digital Rapids VAR (Value Added Reseller) like MobileMediaDevices to consult and sell Touch Stream systems, to Digital Rapids for post sales support, and YourHost.com to connect the dots, providing the user-Friendly, world-wide peering CDN self-administered publishing points, tools, and support. YourHost.com being a Christian owned and operated company, and when it comes to streaming we offer our services to many different venues but our prime streaming focus is on Christian related organizations.
I have reviewed some of the other streaming systems and tools out their and found tools Digital Rapids to be a solid choice for All of our CDN customers. I did like the authoring tools that TriCaster had to offer but the tools and GUI were a little more difficult to the non technical user.
Sorenson Media, Inc. was there showing off their encoding Streaming tools. I had the pleasure of briefly chating with, Cathryne Conner, the Direct Sales Representative and a support resource. Cathryne showed me some of their Squeeze encoding products and how one can make post production modifications with their Squeeze product.
We use and Highly recommend Sorenson products to our customers when encoding for CDN VOD streaming content. With all the time an organization spends producing content, it is critical to use the right encoding tool. I cannot tell you how many times a customer calls or writes and tells us there content is not streaming as smooth and as clear as they would like to find out that they used a free encoding software and underrated hardware to make the streaming files.
On the Move Event Tools -
I ran into two very nice gentlemen from Canada represeting Dejero Labs. They had a an amazing tool that is revolutionizing how people are remote broadcast quality news.
I only had a few minutes with these guys between shoots and I met Ovidiu Frusina and his partner whom I did not get his name (sorry), of Dejero Labs, Inc. Ovidiu’s partner was the key person that gave me the overview and highlights of their product.
In layman’s terms, they have a software-Hardware combination that basically eliminates the need for the Big TV News Truck.
They have found a way to grab any and all phone services where ever they are and bind or combine or “Teather” them to the to create an acceptable pipe to stream live or broadcast from anywhere in broadcast quality.
This means that one can stream anywhere there are multi-carrier cell phone services. Picture the multiple phone services as an 2 to 10 lane plus highway and each highway represents a part of the bandwidth that you need. I.E. Each phone line of a 5 phone carrier choice may represent 150k each and the Dejero system can recognize all 5 and bring the mobile broadcast team a combined 750 k stream!
The software will allow the user drop and add services on-the-fly as they are moving so they not miss or drop content for the most part as I understand it.
In the 2010 Olympics torch run, the Dejero team was the only camera team that was able to follow the 1,000 mile Olympic “carrying of the torch” in Canada, where others could not get a strong enough signal. The system sits in a highly modified Pelican case that was put in the trunk of a Toyota Tercel during the 2010 Olympic torch run. You only need the case and a camera and your ready to stream or broadcast your content.
Dejero is changing the way events are run and covered.
The other area that impressed me was the exponential progression “Green Screen” video production that is now becoming affordable for the “Pro Sumer” user at reasonable costs.
At the end of the day we ran into one of our great hosted Ecommerce customers, EZupDirect.com.
They showed me a great “Transformer”-type table that is very versatile. I understand the design of this cool product was the brain child of CEO Mark Carter of EZup International was the See the photos below.
There was many other items that we reviewed but these stood out the most.
Just got back from the Internet Retailer conference. Not like other shows where your getting sold by every vendor that comes. (we are guilty of that also).
This was loaded with practical, useful workshops interlaced with interactive one-on-one meetings, along with a smattering of workshop-specific vendors.
I went with a one of our customers, Scott Ramspott,
founder of the parent EshopsDirect.com Company. YourHost.com is engaging to completely revamp the sites over the next few months, after we complete the new endeavor, which is a related site selling unique, high end Teak Furniture.
Scott’s company is in Iowa, yeah it’s cold there so this was a great time in Florida and his team is driven to provide the best customer product and experience, which is inline with YourHost.com’s ethics.
Scott has 20+ years in the patio fireplace and hearth business, has defined his market and made relationships to bring products that will offset the seasonal cycles.
Meeting your customer in a one on one setting is one of the best thing you to better understand each other, allowing for better trust and understanding during and after the ecommerce web site process.
The show opened his eyes to the multiple of elements and processes that go into making a great site and partner.
We did meet the Bold Chat team, specifically Shea and the tech team, and we enjoyed a in-depth discussion on how we can incorporate this tool for Live Chat. Bold Chat allows the vendor to make changes and modifications without engaging the developer each time.
They are just on the edge of an Iphone app and they use HTML instead of Java, which means it will not break in the browser like some other chat tools do.
HardRock Cafe and Best Buy were one of the most impressive company that was there. HardRock displayed some of the most cutting-edge memorabilia tools with user and community interaction coming very soon.
When developing a web site, especially Ecommerce, you need to be cautious to the degree of cutting-edge you become as you can loose the late adopters leave dollars on the table.
Stay tuned, we will be reviewing some of the things I learned. Of course, most of our development team already knows what I learned but they cannot tell you from the basic owner or marketing person. So, we come back to the office with our “Pom Poms” in hand, realizing that you definitely need to be cautious and responsible when pushing technology to your customers.
