happen . One of the most basic expectations is for different cloud-based regions to be in place as delivery back-up . If one region – say the east coast of America – should fail , then the stream can be moved over to mid-west servers for example .”

Scale Next , Rudolf tackled the challenges surrounding scale . He recommends the following questions to ask streaming providers :

Question 1 : How many live concurrent users can your streaming platform support ? “ Streaming providers will know this because they will have been load-tested by an independent regulator . The key for any planner is to decide whether or not the answer to this question is in the sweet-spot of their event . For example , if your streaming platform supports 50,000 live concurrent users and your

audience target is 38,000 , would you be comfortable if your ticket sales increased ?”

Question 2 : What ’ s the largest event ever run on your platform ? “ The load-test is theoretical so an important follow-up is to find out the largest event that ’ s been held on the streaming platform , and if you can talk to that customer so that you can ascertain the difference between theory and practice . It ’ s not uncommon for example , for a streaming platform to be load-tested to 100,000 but struggle in the real-world with events over 5,000 .”

Question 3 : How many concurrent live sessions can your platform support ?

“ If you have multiple conference tracks , running concurrently and each with live video , how much can the streaming provider handle ? Can your choice of streaming provider handle your event design ? That ’ s

“ IF A STREAM STARTS TO MISBEHAVE DURING AN EVENT , YOU NEED TO KNOW THAT SOMEONE IS MONITORING IT IN REAL-TIME AND CATCHING ANY ISSUES AS THEY ARISE BEFORE THEY BECOME CATASTROPHIC .”

not something you want to find out after you ’ ve signed the contract .”

Playback and Viewing Moving on to playback and viewing , Brightcove ’ s Rudolf advises asking the following :

Question 1 : Does your streaming platform support native device playback ? “ On-demand content is now a huge opportunity for event planners to develop communities and year-round life cycles for their events . The playback and viewing pieces of the stream will allow you to build features and functions on-top of your event and distribute via different channels , so you need to know that the steam quality will be as good viewed on-demand through say , YouTube or Facebook , as it was when it went out live . Is the stream even compatible with more players than just the one it comes with ? And can you still get viewer analytics if the stream is using multiple players ?”

Question 2 : Does your streaming provider use Adaptive Bit Rate ( ABR ) streaming ? “ Let ’ s say you have someone on a high-end computer , hard-wired into super-fast fibre broadband at one end of your audience scale and at the other end , there ’ s someone on an iPhone using coffee-shop wifi to participate . Everyone else is in-between . So is the stream intelligent enough to adapt to the bandwidth capability of every single person and maintain an acceptable stream quality for everyone ? If the provider is using ABR , the answer will always be yes .”