Casting a fine Net

By Susan Williams

Photo by Paul Martens
Bruce Burgun, associate professor of theatre and drama at IUB (left), chats with South African playwright Athol Fugard in Home Pages’ inaugural “Conversation.”

Auer Hall concert

Streaming media, or ‘webcasting,’ is latest IU marketing tool

Have a big event you want to share with the world? A notable musical performance, a major athletic event, an important academic lecture? Tune in to the ongoing streaming media project underway in IU’s Office of Communications and Marketing (OCM) on the Bloomington campus. It could be just the ticket.

Streaming media—putting live or recorded audio and video of various events onto Web sites—is one of the newest marketing projects to be undertaken by OCM staff. Under the creative direction of Sandra Conn, assistant vice president for public affairs and government relations, the project has moved from a proof-of-concept stage into one that will allow it soon to be offered as a marketing tool for all eight IU campuses.

“Streaming media allows us to look at the rich variety of events taking place at IU and put those that promote our overall marketing messages onto the Web,” said Conn. “We select ‘blockbuster’ kind of things, large and small, and ‘webcast’ them live or after-the-fact.”

The concept was first tested during the fall semester of 1999 with 14 selected events. Conn’s production team started by targeting events that highlight the strengths of the Bloomington campus and support the university’s overall marketing messages.

“We chose to stream four music school events and the Dalai Lama’s appearance on a School of Education panel on preventing youth violence,” Conn explained. “We also went with the NCAA quarterfinal soccer matches held here during the IUB men’s soccer team’s championship run.

“In addition to tackling the technological challenge of production,” she said, “we worked on a marketing strategy to pull people into the site, and on creating a ‘great moment’ archive where we would store these Webcasts for later viewing on line.”

Among the School of Music performances webcast during the test phase was the 75th birthday celebration of cellist Janos Starker, IUB Distinguished Professor of music. The event featured cellists from around the world. Returns on the event were rewarding.

In tracking response to the on-line performance, 4,927 viewers from 25 countries tuned in. The event was also promoted by 200 cello and classical music sites, which also provided links to the IU site. Resulting media coverage included a seven-minute feature on NPR’s Morning Edition for two days and major articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune and USA TODAY, as well as the Bloomington Herald Times and the Indianapolis Star. Finally, 560 E-mails requesting more information, admissions literature and subscriptions to IU News, another OCM electronic product, were tracked to their webcast origins.

The OCM team has moved on to identify other events for webcasting. Now playing is a series of on-line chats, “Conversations On Line,” created by the IU Home Pages’ staff. Like the proverbial little mouse, one can eavesdrop on Bruce Burgun, associate professor of theatre and drama at IUB, chatting with Athol Fugard, the South African playwright and theater legend whose papers are housed at the Lilly Library. Or you can be privy to what Ray Charles had to say to OCM broadcast staffer Byron Smith.

Other streaming media features on line now include a lecture by preeminent J.S. Bach scholar Christoph Wolff, the William Powell Mason Professor of music at Harvard University, given in honor of the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death. Accompanying the lecture are visuals that include a photo of an original score written during the development of Bach’s Mass in B Minor and a performance of the mass by the IU Singers, conducted by Jan Harrington, IUB professor of music.

Also on line is IUB’s Vic Viola, Distinguished Professor of chemistry, who presented this school year’s Tracy M. Sonneborn Lecture, “All Explosions Great and Small.”

Auer Hall concert:

http://www.broadcast.iu.edu/arts/b_minor/index.html

Ray Charles interview:

http://www.homepages.indiana.edu/111000/text/conversations.html

Bruce Burgun, associate professor of theatre and drama at IUB chats with South African playwright Athol Fugard:

http://www.homepages.indiana.edu/092900/text/conversations.html

Check them all out at:

http://www.broadcast.iu.edu