Are you headed to Streaming Media West next week? It’s November 2-3 at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles, CA. Stop by and say hi - we're in booth #57.

Our west coast crew will be on site, including several presentations by three stellar Mediasite customers, all of whom are regular presenters at UNLEASH, the Mediasite User Conference.

Eric Hards (@ehards), Manager, Digital Media Services, Lockheed Martin Space Systems, is giving two presentations on Tuesday, November 2.

• 1:45 p.m. “B103: The Future of Enterprise Webcasting” panel: Many enterprise streaming media initiatives have developed robust on-demand and live webcast capabilities, and some even offer “YouTube”-like functionality. So what’s the next area these companies will focus on? Where do they see the biggest gain in ROI with new products and/or services? What technology do they wish they could implement today, or want to wait for until the “bleeding edge” has dulled? How much media control will they be giving their employees in the future? If you have a well-established streaming media environment, or if you just want to know what the future holds for enterprise streaming media delivery, this is the session for you.
• 2:45 p.m. “C104: Windows Media Server and Network Troubleshooting in an Enterprise Setting” presentation: This presentation offers a basic overview of how Windows Media Servers stream across an enterprise network and how to discover and fix common problems. Learn the ins and outs of working with your enterprise IT group to help them understand the specific issues with streaming across a network that’s not necessarily designed for video. This session is designed for those of you working with streaming technology daily but who may not have a networking background, as well as those looking to start a  streaming initiative within your company that will require you working with internal IT.

Paul Riismandel (@mediageek), Director of Curriculum Support, School of Communication, Northwestern University, is presenting Tuesday as well.

• 10:30 a.m. “C101: The Future of Video in Education” panel: In the face of the rich-media revolution, educational institutions are using video in every aspect of campus life, from lecture capture to distance education, campus websites, libraries and preservation, digital asset management, clubs and events, and more. The challenge is finding media solutions that are agile, scalable, and cost effective. This panel discusses best practices for integrating video and rich-media solutions into higher education institutions, presented by top universities that are leading the charge with integrated media strategies for viewers both on and off campus.

Mike Chop (@chopper), Senior Systems Architect at Cadence Design Systems, is a panelist Wednesday, November 3. He’s also won two Rich Media Impact Awards (2010 Enterprise Award winner, 2009 Enterprise Award finalist).

• 10:30 a.m., “C201: Cost Savings from Enterprise Streaming: How the Conversation Has Changed” panel: Years of conclusive statistics show that streaming can offset travel costs, outsourced services and production costs, and the opportunity costs of removing employees from the office for meetings. But once you’ve proved the ROI and gotten your program going, the question becomes “How do we know this is working?” This session features firsthand examples from Fortune 500 organizations which are employing metrics to prove cost savings and employee engagement of using streaming to support core communications, training, and educational programs.

You can also get your hands on the new Mediasite ML Recorder in booth X too, and see everything that’s new with Mediasite 5.4 and our new partnership with TechSmith to manage Camtasia Relay content within Mediasite.

And new this year, we’re honored to be selected as the exclusive Live Webcast Sponsor for the Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Awards Reception and Party. We’re again a finalist for Best Webcasting Platform (fingers crossed for a – what would you call it – four-peat?) and we’re elated to have the opportunity to work officially with the Streaming Media team, with Sonic Foundry Event Services on site to capture their event live.

See you in L.A. (booth #57), and online at the awards on Tuesday, November 2 at 7:00 p.m. PDT.

If you are an event professional or meeting planner and you read blogs, follow #eventprofs or its contributors on Twitter, or pay attention at all to what's happening at the intersection between social media, webcasting and events, then you've probably heard about Event Camp.

Wondered what all the buzz was about? Here's your chance to find out. Register now for our free, live webinar featuring the men behind the most recent incarnation, Event Camp Twin Cities (#ectc10). We'll go live Tuesday, October 26, 2010, at 1:00 p.m. CDT (convert to your time zone). As always, our best practice webinars are free.

Last month, an event took place in Minneapolis that could very well change the face of meetings to come. The Event Camp Twin Cities program centered on four words - social, innovation, collaboration, experimentation. And with more than 550 people participating online and over 100 people participating in three face-to-face sites, that innovative meeting experiment was a success.

The event's volunteer organizers, Samuel J. Smith and Ray Hansen, sought a safe environment where event professionals could push the boundaries of the traditional face-to-face meeting by trying new things: live webcasting to a remote audience, an online host, international PODS connected with videoconferencing, alternative session formats like Pecha Kucha and game simulations, plus improv, storyslam, a digital scavenger hunt and more.

Join the Event Camp Twin Cities co-founders as they reflect on how they did it, what they learned and why the end result was an experience people are still talking, blogging and tweeting about more than a month later:

• Understand how hybrid event technology, social media and collaborative formats can be used together successfully
• Review the checklist of the technology they tried, how it worked and what they'd do differently next time
• Get inspired through their photos, screen shots and anecdotes to introduce new formats, technology and entertainment at your next event
• And bring your most pressing questions about how to successfully blend social media, collaborative communities, webcasting and other meeting technology

Samuel J. Smith is an event technology consultant that helps event owners identify interactive meeting technologies that are the best fit for their event objectives and budgets. A regular contributor to EventCoup and Engage365, Sam has been working with technology professionally for more than 13 years and international events in Europe since 2006.

Ray Hansen has been an innovative leader and industry expert on interactive meeting technology and audience response systems for nearly a decade. Ray recently started AppE Productions and has been developing social and mobile applications to engage, educate and communicate to audiences of any size.

Here's that link again to register. See you online!

Perhaps the first fashion show webcast via Mediasite: the Saint Wobil Winter / Spring Collection.

September is a time for trying new things in the world of fashion. It marks New York Fashion Week, Vogue Magazine sends forth its largest issue of the year (you can see what goes into the making of that 700-800+ page volume in the documentary The September Issue) plus back-to-school and the changing seasons give you reason enough to don a new look. Yet this September marked another first (at least we think it is a first, let us know if we missed your link): the first fashion show webcasted via Mediasite - the Saint Wobil 2010 Winter/Spring Collection. Embedded here in case you are pining for some glamour in your webcasting day. Or see the embedded player at the Saint Wobil website - just click on Fashion Shows.

We're delighted to have Dr. Lerner with the University of Wisconsin - Platteville presenting "Can Lecture Capture Make You A Better Professor?" on Tuesday, September 21 at 10:30 a.m. CDT (convert to your time zone). As always, our best practices webinars are free. Simply register here before the event.

Does the idea of lecture capture make you uncomfortable? Do you fear it will force you to change the way you teach? Or that attendance will drop as students stop coming to class? Dr. Anne-Marie Lerner thinks you have nothing to fear.

Lerner is a professor at the University of Wisconsin - Platteville and during the spring 2009 semester, she began teaching engineering in a Mediasite-enabled classroom. Three semesters later, she believes lecture capture has made her a better instructor. And today, she's still teaching synchronously to traditional students in the on-site classroom and asynchronously to non-traditional, distance education students who never come on-campus.

One of the most energetic and compelling instructors in this medium, Lerner recently presented her findings at conferences like Campus Technology and the Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning. Now she's carving out time for an online chat with you to present what she's learned and to answer your most pressing questions about getting faculty comfortable with lecture capture.

During this lively discussion, she'll cover:

• Tips to overcome barriers to faculty adoption and evangelism
• Ways to address the comfort level of faculty in adopting lecture capture for both blended and online courses
• What mainstream media - like late night talk shows and even Sesame Street - can teach instructors about teaching through webcasts
• How to embrace tablet PCs and in-room videocameras for course instruction, including real-time notation of formulas and calculations
• Why it is still easy to use student engagement levels, either in class, during office hours or online, to gauge how they will perform

About the presenter:

Anne-Marie Lerner, Ph.D. is at the forefront of using advanced internet technologies in her teaching, including webcasting and video conferencing. She is a third-year faculty member at the University of Wisconsin - Platteville collaborative program located at the University of Wisconsin - Rock County. In her capacity as assistant professor, she has delivered the first streaming courses from a remote campus to two other remote two-year campuses across the state of Wisconsin. Her professional interests include investigating effective teaching pedagogy for remote delivery as well as to nontraditional students, and education assessment. She received her PhD in mechanical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2008.

Here's that link again to register - see you online.