When I learned the municipality was going to broadcast its Jan. 18 staff budget presentation to council over Facebook, I decided to give it a try.
Normally, as a journalist, you attend the event and report on site. In this case, that would have been council chambers at the Civic Centre.
But I wanted to see how well the social media experiment would work, and looked at it from the perspective of a member of the public who could only access the information via social media.
Now, I did build in some contingency planning. I managed to obtain a PowerPoint presentation of the draft budget prior to the meeting, and set it up to speak with Derek Robertson over the phone following the meeting.
The presentation lasted a little over an hour, and there were only a few hiccups. Early on, as people joined the feed, the video buffered – delaying and skipping slightly. It happened a couple of other times during the presentation, but nothing major.
And on two other occasions, I received the “Something Went Wrong” message where the video feed just stopped. I just clicked on the link on the municipal Facebook page, and picked up where things left off.
Overall, it was a good experience. I commend the municipality for setting the feed up, as not everyone has Cogeco cable.
A bonus element from the Facebook streaming was that the video remained up on the municipality’s page. I reviewed some of it that night, and again the next morning, which proved very helpful. It was as if I’d plunked a voice recorder down and captured the entire meeting.
