After reading the UNFCCC specs for an event as well as having seen some of the webcasts produced until now, I would reccomend using a single powerful webcast platform and a local webcast services provider, trained to use that platform, to produce any specific webcast event around the world.

Webcasting has become increasingly demanding on both the platform side and the production side becoming two distinct services.

Any good platform today requires real time transcoding to enable multiple devices, multi-language consistent webcasting, server side recording, sofisticated Q&A protocols, large events with multiple sessions management, aside from platform core services like autoscaling, automatic media servers and transcoders provisioning, a fault tolerance architecture, and so on. 

Webcasting services, on the other hand, require to visit the venue in advance, coordinate with AV crews, supply local telecom solutions and deploy large crews and equipment in case of large events like the ones described in the UNFCCC documentation. Specific equipment is also needed; video mixers to play pre-recorded videos, screencasts or Webex sessions amongst others must be supplied. Webcast services therefore are better managed by a good local services provider.

In recent years webcasts have become a generally helpful norm at large conferences. They offer participants incredible added value, making conferences more effective, improving satisfaction and leading to demonstrably better knowledge transfer. 

Webcasts have now become a necessity for ensuring required transparency for conferences within the political sphere. Today, webcasts have become a working medium for all delegates. They make the work significantly easier and avoid unnecessary travel time and costs. In addition, webcasts allow targeted and controlled communication with media representatives and the public.

For an organisation such as the United Nations in particular, which is often under public scrutiny, its public presentation must remain flawless.

The webcast has become (or will be in future) the first port of call for delegates, observers, media representatives and the public – it is the UNFCCC’s public face.

Video quality, presentation of additional media/documents and its usability must therefore be 100% professional and effective – public perception is otherwise likely to suffer.  

All webcasts must then always meet the following minimum requirements:

• 100% secure broadcast and accessibility – worldwide

• 100% structuring of content.
  i.e. each individual topic must be accessible without lengthy searching

• Content must be 100% up to date, especially where it is related to dynamic and unpredictable negotiations 

• Effective searchability additionally for content such as presentations and individual slides

• The design, imagery and quality of the videos must be of the highest standard – satisfying the audience’s comparison with what they are used to seeing on TV

•  Relevant platforms and news agencies/portals, and especially social media, must be able to access/embed the webcast

Large congresses in other areas (e.g. science, economy or industry) develop into hybrid meetings. Webcast services are a fundamental component in these areas.

In these areas the webcast services are given expanded functionally and form a component of the conference on site at the relevant conference centre, hotels and cities. They allow participants to follow all the relevant information on the event and they offer access to all additional documents and discussions. Hybrid meeting concepts are changing the congress landscape to an enormous degree and have been proven to increase the effectiveness, satisfaction, results and sustainability of conferences and in a manner that protects resources (green meetings).

In developing the webcast services the secretariat should give special attention to this aspect and to corresponding functions.

A basic prerequisite for effective and innovative development in this highly dynamic area are longer term, and above all, robust agreements. Prompt and clear decisions lead to better and more effective services for all participants. It would be desirable for information on these issues to be included in the existing documents.

I guess in the end the webcasting service must contribute to transparency, accountability, provide proof of sound decision making, serve journalists.

Given that search technology for video still offers poor results, I'd focus on integrating webcast material with meta data, like agenda items and speakers, and supporting data like documentation into (1) an easy accessible base and (2) great facilities to share material into other (social) media. Ensure that people can actually find what they are looking for (try to find out what someone said about a specific subject in your current library). Ensure people can share that information with their audience, their team, their supporters.

Understandably, everybody answering here is more or less specifying what their companies are offering. UNFCCC's requirements allow this as the requirements are all specifying the webcast service in stead of clarifying what your objective is with webcasting. I'd like to learn how you want to serve your audience with webcasting.

Thank you for this initiative to try to create a constructive dialogue between public organizations and private companies related to webcast services.

The technical specifications and requirements on what UNFCCC wants in terms of webcast are pretty clear.

In addition to the technical requirements, what could be interesting would be to understand your communication objectives (as previously mentioned by Iwan Lawerman) and your targeted audience in order to better help you reach your goals.

Beyond technical aspects (which are key to ensure quality -- well mentioned by previous contributors to this dialogue), webcasting (both live and on-demand) is a tool to be fully integrated in your communication strategy (pre-during-post each conferences and meetings) and to be fully linked with the other communication tools (for instance social platforms as well as more conventional media/press) and the other content (text, publications, video reports), in order to reach success.

Do you have enough information about your current audience, that is your current "community"? Part of it are  the 7773 twitter followers of @UNFCCCwebcast , the 117000 persons who liked the UNFCCC organization facebook page. But who is your specific targeted audience(s) for the webcasts: country representatives, local politicians, NGO, IGO, industry representatives, journalists, experts in different fields, key opinion leaders, bloggers/influencers in specific domains, any citizen of any age?

What are the needs of your most active online members/followers today with regards to webcasting? Would they like to be more engaged? What do they really want when watching the webcasts live and on-demand? By knowing those answers, we would understand how we can efficiently serve you and your community via webcasting and its related functionalities: do they want to follow the full sessions live the whole day (or night) like someone is watching a movie or her favourite sport on TV passively as observers only? or would they prefer to get a summary with pointers to specific key parts of the conferences afterwards, including recommendations from other co-delegates so as to help them drawing their own conclusions? Would they like functionalities to better access the structured content in a more visual way, searching through the transcripts and through all possible metadata including text in the slides / working documents, filtering by topic, speaker, date? Or would the remote delegates mainly prefer to be more active during (or only before?) the live sessions, being heard, asking questions, networking, making comments with full interaction with the physical participants in the room, rating, sharing ideas and experiences related to each item of the agenda of the meetings?

State-of-the-art technical webcasting aspects are fundamental and essential. We are convinced that combining them with a user/community centered approach will help you reach an efficient communication & knowledge management strategy.

Thanks a lot for the opportunity to take part in the commercial dialogue. Here some additional comments:

1)      Section 4: Full description of the service to be provided - Live and on-demand webcasts – Video format

We recommend to use HLS (Apple http-streaming) in order to reach mobile devices provided by Apple.

With regard to the implementation of new technology we propose to use the VP9-Codec (VP-Next/Next Gen Open Video (NGOV)). This is a new codec developed by Google that allows a better video quality by consuming lower bandwidth.

2)      Section 4: Full description of the service to be provided - Live and on-demand webcasts – Webex:

We would recommend to use a VGA output only when there is no alternative. In addition to the usage of SDI we recommend using HDMI-output.

From our point of view the technical specifications and requirements are pretty clear. We only have a few questions: