I was having dinner with my family the other night and we had the Be Our Guest Podcast playing in the background because Mike, Rikki, Pam and Debbie were doing their 12 hour live show to raise money for Give Kids the World.  I think my dad was fascinated that Mike was running the show out of his basement.  He was asking me how it’s done and I explained that he has a microphone and it’s set up to his computer and he uses Skype.  That’s about the extent of my knowledge of how Mike runs the show from his basement.  I know that there is more involved with editing the show and getting it posted to iTunes afterwards.  In fact, I researched how to create a podcast last summer; but nothing came of it.

So we were talking and my dad was saying how technology is outrunning him.  We were discussing voice over IP and how phone lines used to transfer data via fax and bits and bytes… (I’m not sure of all the technical telephone data jargon he was using).  He worked for the phone company for my whole childhood.  That was when the phone company was known as the phone company, Southern New England Telephone (SNET).  There was only one phone company.  That’s when you worked for a company until you retired, you didn’t switch jobs every couple of years because of layoffs, downsizing, or companies leaving the state because the taxes are too high to do business here.

What was my point???  Oh yea, technology.  I have been on a learning kick lately listening to podcasts about Social Media Marketing.  One podcast in particular that I like a lot is Social Media Examiner with Michael Stelzner.  Back in April I heard about an app called Periscope.  I didn’t know what it was, but it was popping up on my phone.  So I had to check it out.  My younger friends like Joe Pardo were using it and that was making me feel like I am behind the times on these new cutting edge technologies.  I felt like what my dad said.  It was beginning to out run me.  So I had to research into it.  I signed up for Periscope and saw my friend, Joe who was running a race in Philly stream it live while he was running.  Then when the Mickey Milers were in Disney for the Everest Challenge race, they were using it to broadcast the event.  I still used it to only watch what others were doing; but wasn’t “broadcasting” any of my own events.  Then I tried it one night.  It was fun.  I want to use it for more purposeful things instead of live streaming my gas fireplace on my back deck, and I will when the time is right.  But I also needed to learn more about this so I turned to Michael’s podcast.  Most recently he had an episode with Brian Fanzo about Meerkat and Periscope.  If you don’t know what the differences are between these two apps, please check out this podcast.  It was great.  Brian explained the differences between the two, the pros and cons of each and also, which one do you want to use to get started with live mobile broadcasting.

If there is an event that I can’t attend I am now going to search Periscope to see if anyone is streaming that event live.  This is great for attendees of conferences who want to share some of the content they are hearing to others.  But as I was thinking about that, I wondered how that will be received by the event hosts.  Attendees pay money to attend the conferences, and if others are live mobile broadcasting the content, then where is it considered not appropriate to share?  Using your phone to live broadcast a movie is of course, illegal and I’m sure the platforms will shut down the users who are taking such actions.  So there is a lot of questions regarding privacy and copyright that must be considered when using these live mobile broadcasting tools.  But when using them with the right intentions in the right way; they are a powerful way to influence and share with others.

My friend Amanda recently attended the IPW15 and Periscoped a private party being hosted in the Magic Kingdom that night.  It was incredible to see the ghosts of the haunted mansion outside while she showed us the video and answered questions that were being typed into the app.

So if you want to stay ahead of the curve with technology and social media, I suggest you start listening to the Social Media Marketing Podcast.  It has been an extremely helpful podcast to educate me on the latest trends in Marketing and Social Media.