Let me start with a real time (as of a day ago, by the time I post this after coming back online tomorrow) update. I’m in Kofa National Wildlife Refuge. Cell signal is shit. SMS only, but that has allowed me a lot of time to compose offline, both on blog and brain time. So, I’m now WAY behind. But the good news is, there is a lot written in the queue now – just need to load the photos I processed and post. So, you’ll be getting much more frequent posts for the next while. Now, onto Christmas day only eleven days ago as I write this!
I’ll be honest – Christmas is not my holiday at all – the spirit of giving has been corrupted into a frenzy of buying. It certainly influenced my decision to NOT be anywhere near my home for the holiday. About the only good thing about it is spending time with friends and having a good meal. Family is dependent on if you have family, and if you want to spend time with them. I inherited family through my Dad’s second marriage, they are a sane and intelligent bunch for the most part – no problems here!
But today, in the desert was going to be different. VERY different.
The standard thing to do camping if you are getting together for a meal is to do potluck. So, nothing unusual there. Helping with a YouTube live stream and having the camera turned on me was VERY different. 700 odd people watching live, north of 10,000 tuning in to watch the recording later. I’ve never spoken in public for a crowd larger than 30, so yeah, different.
Carolyn decides to start a bit early, going around the camp and showing the scenery. She introduces Larry and myself, easy enough. She had prepared a bunch of questions submitted to her for the Livestream, we were going to read them, giving her one less thing to keep track of in a Livestream. The thing is, it’s not all just talking to the camera. People are commenting, you need to watch that. If you are totally solo, you need to ban trolls and police people that are being rude on the chat. But at least Carolyn had some moderators (and myself) online to help with that. Extra complications come from “super chat” comments on YouTube now. People pay money to have their comments highlighted, with an icon displayed on the top with your avatar (or picture). The more you pay, the longer the avatar stays up. As a Livestreamer, you would be wise to acknowledge those, and answer those questions in preference to other comments. But it is surprisingly easy to miss, you need to watch your comments all the time, and monitor the avatars in case a comment flew by so quickly you missed it. Yes, you can scroll back to those. With hundreds of people, even ten percent typing comments and questions leads to a lot of text flying by quickly, you can’t even read it all sometimes.
We keep going on, with us supplying the questions when there is a lull in her talking. But, we have all had our morning coffees, and in setting up the Livestream (be out of the wind, in the shade with a laptop, hooked up, with questions ready) we all forgot one thing: empty our bladders before the Livestream starts! Since we are just reading questions, we have long breaks between where we can sneak off to the bathroom. But not Carolyn! She has to keep talking. But she states all of a sudden that she will turn the camera over to us for short while to tell our story, as she needs to use the bathroom. Uh-oh. But I have a few minutes to mentally compose my three minute speech. At least, I hope it’s only going to be three minutes! Eventually, my turn comes and I speak my bit. It works out quite well, as Carolyn returns just as I’m ending my story of how I got to be out here. But I don’t exactly get to any questions, it’s hard enough just thinking of something to say, never mind watching for questions too! Larry at least got to just say his piece with Carolyn filming – for a brief time I was the show. Carolyn asks me on the Livestream how I found it. “Intimidating” I say. But I have had my moment of fame, as has Larry – two stars are born on this Christmas day.
But I look like such a dork on YouTube!
In case you need more convincing I look like a dork on YouTube. Carolyn looks much better!
