NASA Conquers Challenge of Streaming Video In-House
Not all of NASA's missions are beyond Earth's atmosphere. Like any large organization, it needs to stream video to employees in multiple locations. As Bryan Walls, NASA's web video working chair explained at the recent Streaming Media West conference in Los Angeles, this is one mission NASA surmounts even with a shrinking budget.
For in-house video, NASA relies on its Digital TV Program, a platform that has grown and changed over time.
"The Digital TV program was originally instituted to do our analog television infrastructure, transitioned to digital, and then on to HD. Last year its scope was expanded to include web video all across the agency," said Walls.
NASA's videos need to reach 11 field centers, all of which work independently. Currently, Walls and others at NASA are working on standardizing the tools used across the agency, in order to promote sharing and reduce costs.
To show how NASA would tackle an internal video challenge, the session moderator asked Walls what he would do if he received an internal request to live stream a town hall meeting.
"I'd start out with three basic questions: One is where is the event going to be held, two is who is your target audience, and three is how does your funding look?" Walls said.
"For the first one, where the event is held, we basically have three different possibilities there: NASA has a rich video background in traditional video, so almost every center either has or has access to professional videographers. We have an infrastructure there -- usually there's a studio, there's somewhere you can go to do a press event, usually there's a big auditorium. If you're in one of those locations, you can tie directly into our studio -- normally, it's HD going straight to a switcher -- and we can do the encode from the studio. So, if you're in that case, that's the easiest for us," Walls explained.
Walls went on to say how NASA would stream an event from within its internal network and how it would handle remote events. Streaming video all over the world is actually easier for NASA than streaming to all of its 11 centers, he said. For more from Walls, including how funding is NASA is now tighter than he's ever seen it, watch the full video below.
Best Practices for Enterprise Communications
As companies begin to implement video, many are finding that "one size doesn't fit all" when it comes to matching video delivery platforms with enterprise communication strategy. Is it a Town Hall meeting with the CEO or a geographically disperse team meeting? They aren't the same thing, and different technology requirements are needed. To further complicate things, video delivery platforms all have their strengths and weaknesses, and different departments in the organization often own different parts of the technologies and strategies. What's a communicator to do? Learn from experts in corporate communications, event planning, and technology support about best practices in working together to use the right mix of video technologies to reach your audience most effectively.
Moderator: Patty Perkins, Team Leader, Wells Fargo Creative Services Technology, Wells Fargo
Speaker: Mark Sherwood, Senior Director, Emerging Technology IT Group, Cisco
Speaker: Bryan Walls, NASA Web Video Working Chair, NASA
Speaker: Jeff Miller, Digital Communication and Delivery Specialist, Toyota Motor Sales
Speaker: Andrea Doane, Manager, Employee Communications, GE
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