Live Casting: Bringing Astronomy to the Masses in Real Time Best Practices Pamela L. Gay Phil Plait Jordan Raddick SIUE/Astronomy Cast Bad Astronomy/Discover Magazine Johns Hopkins University E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] Fraser Cain Emily Lakdawalla Universe Today/Astronomy Cast Planetary Society E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] Summary Key Words The way we receive information in today’s digital society has radically changed. Live Webcast Audiences are no longer passive consumers of content, but expect to be able Web 2.0 to access the latest news rapidly from a variety of portals and sources. The New Media needs of this rapidly expanding tech-savvy community are being met by a community of bloggers, podcasters and vodcasters, who use a suite of textual, audio and video content to reach their audience, many of whom subscribe to and follow content they enjoy. These communicators are the new faces of public outreach and journalism, and they are most effective when closest to the action. This desire to bring online audiences into the conference room alongside the scientists and professionals had led to the development of live- blogging. The idea is simple; anyone sitting somewhere interesting only needs a connection to the internet to report their experiences in real time. Introduction of waiting until after a press conference is technology also extends beyond the press complete, journalists are publicising events conference, and allows scientists and jour- In the internet age, the time between when in real time, “blogging” the details to an nalists to convey the results presented in news is made and when it is consumed has audience through the internet. conference oral and poster sessions. It is shortened dramatically. In the past it might even possible to conduct and stream inter- have taken several months for announce- During today’s press conferences, journal- views and conference sessions, thereby ments from scientists to transform from ists and bloggers with internet-connected allowing the public to participate in a part press releases into magazine articles sit- laptops take live blogging to a new level, and of the scientific process that is generally ting on a newsstand. Science coverage in not only type away as researchers speak, kept behind closed doors. newspapers shortens this period to a few making the discoveries known immediately days. The spread of high speed internet to a worldwide audience, but they also In this paper we describe the technology connections has collapsed this period to stream audio and video to an international and infrastructure that are required to just a few hours, with many stories receiving audience, allowing questions from the glo- make live webcasting a reality, strategies wide coverage within minutes of release. bal astronomy community to be asked in for creating content the public will want to the moment. Using portable technologies, consume, and describe the impact of our In 2005 a new trend began to emerge for it is possible to transmit pictures, text, and work. the media coverage of events that unfold even live audio and video streams out to over days or weeks: live blogging. Instead an enthusiastic audience in real time. This • Live Casting: Bringing Astronomy to the Masses in Real Time • CAPjournal, No. 6, June 2009 • Page 26 • Live Casting: Bringing Astronomy to the Masses in Real Time • CAPjournal, No. 6, June 2009 • Page 27 Technology prevalent blog software packages today To cover meetings effectively, we recom- are MovableType/TypePad (Trott, 2008) mend having two bloggers per day’s worth Live webcasting is an overarching term and Wordpress (Boren et al., 2008), while of sessions you wish to cover. This means that describes a suite of internet commu- hosting companies such as Wordpress. that if you want to fully blog a meeting with nications pipelines that allow bloggers, com and Blogger.com are frequently used four parallel sessions running at all times, podcasters and videocasters to convey by the public and scientists alike. eight bloggers are needed. In general, it content to the public in real and near-real is rare at smaller meetings for there to be time. This suite includes: text-based (live There are just three elements needed to more than one newsworthy event at a given blogged) content including Twittering, live blog using an existing standard blog: moment, and two bloggers are sufficient. audio content, and video content. In the a person capable of listening and writing following subsections we discuss each of simultaneously, an internet-enabled device The second text-based mechanism for live these technologies in turn. In addition to capable of communicating to the blog web- blogging a meeting is to use Twitter (2008) what is listed below, we also recommend site and an internet connection. We recom- or a similar micro-blogging technology. carrying a digital camera. mend using a laptop computer with both Twitter is a free web-based micro-blog a wireless card and a cellular internet card service that allows users to “tweet” 140 Live blogging available. The procedure is simple: an indi- characters at a time to anyone who sub- vidual sits in a session and translates to a scribes to their RSS-based Twitter feed. The idea of live blogging is simple: an indi- public audience what is being said while an Several NASA missions, including both vidual with a computer or other internet- event is taking place, pushing their content Phoenix1 and the Lunar Reconnaissance enabled device sits at a live presentation to their blog in frequent bursts, often at the Orbiter2, use this service to communicate and makes frequent updates to a website, end of every five-minute talk or after writing updates on their programmes. NASA allowing people to know what is happen- each paragraph during longer sessions. Education and Public Outreach specialist ing in real or near-real time. Since 2005, Stephanie Stockman frequently Twitters the number of science bloggers has slowly One of the greatest hurdles to overcome the content of science conferences under increased, as has the diversity of ways in live blogging is simply getting online. the username Geosteph. Twitter does not require an internet connection: it is possible to tweet via SMS text messaging from any standard cell phone. While being confined to 140 characters makes it difficult to trans- late complex science terms to the public, it is possible to share announcements that include web links easily from anywhere. Audio- or podcasting In addition to text-based coverage, audio interviews are also a part of the live web- casting suite. While most often carried out as a series of interviews that are then pushed to the public a few hours (or a day) after recording, it is also possible to stream content via software such as Ustream.tv (discussed in detail in the section Video- casting). In this section we focus on ways to facilitate audio recording for asynchronous Figure 1. Gay recording an audio interview with Ralph Harvey (left) at LPSC. Credit: Astronomy Cast. transmission. meetings are conveyed. Today, live blog- Many event facilities do not provide internet For live webcasting, the most important ging comes in two basic flavours, full blog access in all the rooms. Many conference characteristics in an audio recorder are and micro blog (e.g., Twitter) coverage. buildings also do not have a good cell recording quality, long battery life and phone signal throughout the facility. We small size. Both Astronomy Cast and the At their most basic level, blogs are RSS strongly recommend working with confer- BBC’s The Naked Scientists use a Roland feeds that contain at least text. RSS, which ence organisers when possible to facilitate Edirol R-09 WAVE/mp3 handheld audio stands for Really Simple Syndication, is online access. Should internet access not recorder and (as needed) an external wired a type of feed that uses the eXtensible be available in sessions, it may be neces- microphone. This device easily fits into Markup Language (XML) to transmit con- sary to blog in a text window, and then find a most pockets, uses standard AA batteries tent in a set format understandable by web point where cellular internet access is avail- (which conveniently also fit into pockets), pages and aggregation software (see Gay able to upload stories between events. and can hold several hours of audio on a et al., 2006, for examples and a complete standard SD memory card. description). These RSS feeds typically The second largest hurdle to overcome appear on a website that updates when the is simple mental overload. Science ses- Once audio has been recorded, it typically RSS is updated with a new story. Any RSS sions often last more than an hour and needs to be processed for online post- feed can also be subscribed to via aggre- can include eight or more talks in that ing, and it may require editing. The most gation software. Creating such a blog has short period of time. Trying to constantly common issues with raw audio are uneven been made easier by the advent of easily translate presented science content to a audio levels and background noise. Pro- available software and hosting; the most public audience is an exhausting process. ducers typically employ a combination of GigaVox’s Levelator (Sharpe et al., 2008) to either live stream or post to the internet (but not always) a more stable connection to level audio, and one of the following to in a variety of formats. The most commonly between a video camera and Ustream.tv, filter and edit audio: Audacity (2008), Crea- used options in the United States are post- and it also allows one to switch between tive Suites 3 (Adobe, 2008) or iLife (Apple, ing content via YouTube/GoogleVideo, or cameras, use special effects, and stream 2008).