How we accidentally created a streaming platform
In 2010 at Evermore (Barouh & Partners back then) we were a three-people company. We organized the audio-visual aspects of events, built websites, and we filmed and edited videos. We had a client in Geneva (thank you Arielle) UN Watch whose website we had built and we were also responsible for the technical aspects of their yearly event “Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy”.
They asked us if we could stream the event. We said of course having no clue how to do that and resorted to Anton Evangelatov for help. It was quite stressful but we managed to pull it off. First, we plugged the camera (yes just one camera) via firewire directly into the computer which had to encode and compress the image and also upload it to a streaming server and hope that nothing overheats or freezes. I only have two photos from back then.
Once we had done one event we decided to invest time and effort to do more of these.
Since we were hired often to film and edit videos of events this seemed like the next logical step. The first achievements were when we managed to go through a video mixer and were able to feed in the mixed image from various cameras. What needed to be done on the computer required another skill level so Anton had to be present and monitor everything on site. The problem was that he was studying in the UK and had to fly in for every event. The next step was to automate as many processes as possible to avoid bringing him in person. He still had to be online and monitor everything but at least he could do it from anywhere with an internet connection.
From a logistical our quotes only included the services that we were offering mainly filing, streaming, and editing. However, with every event, we had issues that we did not foresee. Each of those became a line in the terms and conditions of the quotes. The most absurd of those was that we had to add a line that said: “To provide streaming services the venue has to have a stable wired internet connection. We can not be held liable for the lack of internet”. After a while, the terms and conditions became a few pages.
The expected number of viewers was also a big issue as Anton had to turn on new servers after reaching a given number of viewers. Slowly, the streaming evolved from being a difficult add-on to the event services to a stand-alone multi lingua lservice tailor-made for conferences.
Livecasts currently serves clients such as Google, the European Parliament, and BNP Paribas.
I left Evermore and subsequently Livecasts in 2019 to join X Challenge Park but I am very happy that Dávid Reinhold and Ivaylo Mladenov keep pushing Livecasts further and further and can’t wait to see what they come up with next.
