Greater Edmonton Region Speaks

Thursday was the inaugural launch of fusedlogicTV – “On The Road.” A made for web live TV series we intend to continue and bring to a neighbourhood near you. Contingent on sponsors and interest of course.

I’m not going to run through the entire show play-by-play, but I would like to mention a few key take-aways.  Technically, we had very little really go wrong with the day.  Oh sure, there were guests I’d never met until seconds before going live, guests without pants, pet cameos, names I got wrong, a lack of food all day and not wanting to chow down on camera means I was operating on fumes.  Which probably contributed to situations with panelists where I rudely cut them off in mid-sentence, not intending to be rude, but what are you going to do? All in a days work on fusedlogicTV.  One thing is for sure, we had no shortage of great people on the show.  I’m so gratified that nearly everyone we asked was able to participate.

Another key moving forward is that we have some fine-tuning to do on our production.  I believe we can make programming improvements that will help the next show flow a bit better.  We gave everyone at least a half-hour on the show, and it seemed to me with all the panels, there simply wasn’t enough time to cover all that we wanted to.  In each and every case, we could have talked for hours.  A tribute to the quality of the guests, they were great.

In particular, I want to mention that this had an effect on the time that our Open Government panel had to speak.  Compounding the issue was that I elaborated a bit too much and because of some technical things with cell-phones, Skype bandwidth etc, I might have come off a bit rude cutting things off on air.  That was totally not my intention when setting the stage for a question or response from our panelists.  A panel that collectively could fill days of airtime with their wisdom and knowledge on Open Government was distilled down to a few moments each.

Note to self, “Walter, shut-up and let your guests speak, ya bonehead.” That’s something I’ll definitely work on for next time, less the presenter and more the listener.

I tend to get really passionate about the topics and excited about the guests.  Listening more will be part of my personal journey, something my wife will be happy about too.

Laughter

Of course, having said all of the above, if you caught our pro-sports with Allan Watt from the Edmonton Oilers, David Jamieson from the Edmonton Eskimos and the Team1260′s Kyle Chase, there was certainly no shortage of banter, laughter and great discussion going on.  Also, Kyle was kind enough to join us at the last minute and I wasn’t aware until literally seconds before going live who he was by face.  I said, “Hi, what’s your name?” “Kyle Chase, Team1260.” I said, “Kelly, great to meet you.”  Thankfully, there was no shortage of people there to correct me, thanks Allan. I got it right on air, watch the segment and notice Kyle shakes his head up and down as I mention his name.

More laughter was had on Skype with Duleepa (Dups) Wijayawardhana, CEO of local Edmonton start-up Empire Avenue.  This is a serious contender and we had lot’s of opportunity to tackle some of the misconceptions that are floating around on Twitter, and elsewhere.  During the interview the battery on Dups’ laptop was about to die so he said, “Please excuse me while I move, I didn’t anticipate this and I don’t have any pants on.”  Just shortly after that his cat decided to be the star of the show and walked into camera…awesome TV!

Thank-you to our guests

The proof of a great show is in the feedback.  Thankfully that has been very positive on many fronts.  From in studio guests, panelists, viewers in our chat room, by email and online.  I’d like to thank each and everyone one of you for providing feedback.  We look at each one as a chance to improve or continue in a positive direction.  You make us better.  Please continue to speak-up and let us know.  Do you see value in a regular video podcast telling the kind of stories we did on Thursday?

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the support from the community.  The show is only as good as the people on it and the discussion and we had wonderful people and organizations participate.  Here’s the list in no particular order.

More of the great feedback regarding our show includes one viewer’s comments that we had “too many good guests,” they would have liked a shorter show possibly.  We’ve also had feedback that we’ve reached new audiences as people who would have never consumed a live video podcast in the past tuned-in or showed up to witness it in person.

Thank-you to our sponsors

As I said live, a show like this cannot go forward without the kind support from the business community we were fortunate to receive.  Our lead business sponsor was First Foundation, Gord McCallum and his team including Sheila Hawkins stepped-up and said we want to be a part of this.  They put together a great panel including Kelly from CMHC, whom I only met a minute before going on air, and Stephen Lau, a successful Realtor. Great discussion regarding how people should prepare for applying for a mortgage.  Watch the high-priced car loan folks, it can prevent you from getting that new home.

The Golden Rice Bowl equals fantastic authentic chinese food.  I know this for a fact because after the show all of us were exhausted and Miranda Lau, the owner came by, took one look at us and said, “you guys sit down and eat, I’ve got food coming for you.” and boy was it good.  This is not the first meal I’ve had at the Golden Rice Bowl but it was a clear reminder as to why the place is packed much of the time.

What’s next?

Well certainly our archived video will be up as soon as Mr. Evan (I broke my hand) Adnams can work to get the video up on fusedlogic.tv for those who missed the live show to watch.  One thing I will caution everyone on.  We had lower than preferred upload bandwidth so our playback quality will suffer a bit as a result.  Still that’s mostly us being perfectionists.

Certainly, we’re looking for interesting stories to cover and we’ve received many requests to do “free” shows.  Unfortunately, there is quite a production that goes on to do this right and with high production values.  If you’d like to have a show for your organization, region or cause we’d love to help, we just cannot afford to help everyone for free or at a discount.  We are happy to work with you on getting some funding for your project via the sponsorship model, for the the right show that works really well.  We’ve generated over 100,000 viewer minutes in 2010 just with the few shows we’ve done, there’s more eyes looking at fusedlogicTV everyday and your great stories are the reason why.

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