PatronManager

I’ve been sitting for a few days with a link to this article from the LA Times, trying to decide if it is a good thing or not. The article talks about Qik.com, a startup I heard about at the NTEN Conference in New Orleans a few weeks ago. There are others doing the same thing, such as Flixwagon.com.

These services provide a way for anyone to stream live video to the Web from their cell phones. My guess is that this technology will soon be ubiquitous. 

If you’ve been to a rock concert recently, you’ve probably seen several dozen cameras poking above the heads of the crowd snapping digital pictures, or even recording entire songs or whole concerts which then get posted to Youtube within hours. Soon, those same cell phones will be in the air more or less permanently, recording and streaming the events live.

Aside from the obvious copyright issues (which everyone is dealing with), I’ve decided that this is ultimately going to be a good thing for non-profits. What may happen is that the burden of broadcasting events (whether they are live concerts, a pre-theatre talk, a lecture, rally, or board meeting) will shift from the organization to all the rest of us. Let’s say I’m interested in hearing a pre-theatre talk with a director, but I can’t make it to the event and the XYZ theatre staff is just too busy to organize a recording of it. No problem, the audience will be there to take care of it and post it online.

The net result will be that information of a more immediate nature, and of higher quality, will be more accessible more frequently. For any mission-based organization, that can only be a good thing.