Before I came to Radish, I was director of content and community at Techonomy Media, which produces live events and online content exploring the role of technology in business and society. Since 2011, Techonomy has used Livestream to broadcast all of its events on the web, embedding streams on its website and on media platforms like Forbes.com. This gives Techonomy's online community an opportunity to be virtually “in the room” with an exclusive group of participants that pays up to four figures to take part in a three-day, invite-only conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif. As the event is happening, the stream is converted into an archive of clips, which Techonomy can edit into highlights to tell an impactful story about its mission, its community, and its ideas.
Techonomy's target audience is an elite community of business leaders and technologists. Radish Lab’s works with social-impact organizations that target a broad and diverse global audience. Whether it’s fostering global gender equality, amplifying dialogue about social entrepreneurship, promoting the UN’s World Humanitarian Day, safeguarding robust, free, and democratic media, raising awareness about climate change, or just helping you find the best parties in your city, we deploy an array of interactive digital tools to make sure the message gets through, both emotionally and intellectually.
When we start a project with a new client, we take them through a process called the Discovery Lab that helps them distill their goals by telling us in their own words what their story is, who they want to tell it to, and how they want to tell it. The more we understand the story and the audience, the more we can help our clients craft a targeted, resonant digital narrative. We also get insight into the challenges within the organization: how easily do they reach consensus, which stories do they have a hard time telling? Sometimes an organization doesn’t need fresh branding or a shiny new website. They may just need sharper content strategy, an impactful data visualization, an eye-popping interactive feature, or a series of vibrant short videos.
Increasingly, we believe that live video has potential as an additional tool to help broaden and advance dialogue around initiatives for change. We think it could be especially effective in educating communities and recruiting stakeholders around social impact campaigns. We want to start testing this premise by webcasting our monthly meetup series, Designing Change, where we gather entrepreneurs, designers, producers, and storytellers to explore the storytelling techniques that help social-impact organizations amplify their missions. We tackle topics like how organizations can use data to create impactful visualizations, how information architecture can improve your connection with your community, and how to make your cause go viral for under $10k. Broadcasting these conversations to audiences that can’t schlep out to Bushwick will help us understand first-hand just how powerful streaming video can be in coalescing community around causes and ideas. That’s why we’re partnering with Livestream Public to make Designing Change available not only to our friends and colleagues in Brooklyn, but to change makers throughout the world. In the process, we aim to refine streaming video as a unique offering to our clients.
Live video lets your community participate in the conversations that shape your organization’s agenda and activate its mission. It opens up access to the raw, unvarnished inspiration that drives your cause. And nothing grows community more than the spontaneous interaction of its stakeholders.
With its powerful platform and services, Livestream is a leader in live web broadcasting. Our partnership with Livestream Public will help incubate a unique storytelling tool for social impact campaigns and develop a powerful new channel for change. Come help us inaugurate this initiative on March 31 at 6:30pm at Livestream’s global headquarters on Morgan Ave.