13 Mar How One University Campus Is Connecting with the World Through Live Stream
Trinity University is based in San Antonio, but with their growing live stream network, Tiger Network, they are now connecting with alumni and viewers around the world.
Trinity is a perfect example of a university using live stream technology creatively and effectively. Since they launched Tiger Network a year and a half ago, they’ve gone from only streaming graduation ceremonies to streaming all home games, guest lectures, concerts and many other events—often at the same time.
Because of Tiger Network, what was once only available to students or alumni who could attend is now available for anyone connected with Trinity from alumni to former staff and faculty to those who are simply friends or donors of the university.
Today, they reach thousands across the globe, keeping them in constant contact with alumni and ensuring that when someone like former British Prime Minister David Cameron or world renown primatologist Jane Goodall come on campus, they can offer the events to their entire network.
MediaFusion president, Missy Ivankovich, recently sat down with two Trinity staff members who oversee Tiger Network: Taylor Stakes, who is the video and web multimedia content developer, and Josh Moczygemba, sports marketing coordinator.
You can watch our webcast to see the full interview, but here are a few insights Josh and Taylor have about what it’s been like to integrate live stream technology with university life:
M: What are some obstacles universities face when incorporating live stream into their on-campus events?
T: I think a lot of institutions struggle with the technology aspect of it: How do we get it launched? How do we get it started? That’s where the planning stages are very important.
What’s been nice about our marketing department and leadership at the university is they’ve given us chances to fail. It’s not perfect…but we have a product now that’s on par with larger institutions that have larger budgets.
That’s something that’s really neat as far as the technical aspect of it. It’s possible to do it on a budget. It’s possible to do it really well on a budget. That’s what scares off a lot of institutions—the budget, the staffing. We’ve been able to keep the budget at lower cost but also have a lot of staff.
M: How have you been able to do that?
J: One of the things we did that was unique from the other places I’ve seen try to take this on was…we looked at other departments to see how we, as an entire university, [could] come together and pull this off.
We have great relationships with our athletic department. We have a great relationship with our faculty and staff who can tell us, “We’ve got this class [or] this speaker.” It’s important to take advantage of your entire university. So it’s not just one team that handles video production.
Right now through Tiger Network we have 21 students employed who work on a weekly basis for us. They’re a part of our internship program, so it’s an opportunity for them to have a job on campus but also provides us with the types of things we would need to pull off running a complete network like this.
M: Why did you decide to partner with MediaFusion?
T: When I first came to Trinity, part of my job was to do the live streaming of graduations, so it was twice a year, in the fall and in the spring. There wasn’t too much production that went into it, so we were using a live stream box and live stream platform. But when Tiger Network came on board, we all of a sudden took on all of the sports [events] and our goal was to stream every home game…that happened at Trinity. In addition to graduation, the Christmas concert, and then all these other lectures that are endowed for Trinity.
So we had to take a step back and realize a lot of these events are going to take place at the same time. We were limited with our [current] streaming provider. I used to work at a church here in San Antonio that had utilized MediaFusion, and I heard that they were doing two different streams at the same time and had had some really good success with it. So that’s why we initially reached out to MediaFusion, and it’s been great for us.
M: We have more recently worked with you on providing password protection for some of your events. Why was that important for Trinity?
T: With universities, when they bring high-profile speakers to campus, contracts come into play and negotiations come into play. We really wanted to make sure that these lecturers got to our alumni who weren’t on campus. One of the ways that MediaFusion was able to [help] us was a password-protected stream. So we can send out a password to our alumni and say, “Hey, David Cameron is coming to Trinity. If you can’t make it to campus, here’s the password to go watch it.”
The response to that is just phenomenal. Hundreds of former alumni and people connected to the university were able to tune in who couldn’t have gotten in. It was a sold out event. You had to have a ticket, so if you didn’t get a ticket, you could still see him and see his lecture.
To learn more about the Tiger Network and how a university can utilize live stream, be sure to watch our webcast here!