uStream – Chat – schedule

I received several complaints today from people who said that they were following our Space Elevator Games broadcast on uStream and were using the uStream Chat feature to ask us questions, but were getting no response.

We’re very sorry about this, but we are unable to log onto the uStream chat server ourselves – I think it’s a firewall issue here at the NASA-Dryden Flight Research center.  We’re working with their network people to resolve the issue, but I’m not optimistic that it will be solved before the Games are over.  Until it is resolved, I’ve disabled the Chat feature for this broadcast so that users will not feel like they’re being ignored by us.

So, if you want to ask us questions, use the Social Stream feature of uStream.  Unfortunately it requires that you have a Twitter account, but it’s the best we’re going to be able to do right now.  We did use this today and I responded to all of the questions that were sent to us.

I freely admit that our broadcasts are not ‘professional’ or of the ‘highest quality’.  We’re all volunteers, we’re all new at this and we’re all doing the best we can.  Bryan Laubscher and myself (who are your hosts for these broadcasts) are monitoring several sources of information simultaneously to try and provide you with the latest updates.  We’re working on limiting the ‘information conflicts’ and also promise to try and refrain from drumming on the table while we’re broadcasting 🙂

Tomorrow, the number of Media personnel here in the ISF (the NASA facility that we are broadcasting from) will also be less and this will also help us try and keep things on a more even keel – we were trying to answer questions from the Press while also trying to follow the NASA radio chatter (of which we could only hear one side) and second-by-second updates provided by Ben Shelef to me via cell-phone.

Also, rather than logging into uStream directly, I would strongly urge you to go to the  http://live.spaceelevatorgames.org website.  In addition to being able to watch the live broadcast, you can also view saved video clips and pictures.  You can also chat with us (again, via the Social Streams Twitter function) by clicking on the CHAT link at the bottom of the page.

Finally, I truly do appreciate the comments and (constructive) criticism I’ve received, either via email or as comments sent to my Blog.  It’s helped us spot where the errors are and is being used by us to improve our Broadcast.  But for those very few of you who have decided to make the criticisms personal, please keep your venom to yourself; it is not needed or appreciated and, in the future, will be ignored.

Day 2 of the Space Elevator Games starts in just a few hours.  USST is scheduled to be up first and we’re aiming for their climb window to open up at 7:00am Pacific Time.  Once they’ve had a chance to Climb, the three teams will get together with Ben Shelef and decide on the order for the next set of Climbs.  These should start shortly after the initial USST run.

So, four runs scheduled for tomorrow, Thursday.  Today was great – tomorrow should be even better and more exciting…

Stay tuned!

4 thoughts on “uStream – Chat – schedule

  1. Elizabeth

    It looks like you’ve disabled chat from UStream? Even though we weren’t able to talk to you guys, it was useful yesterday. If nothing else, people were echoing for the people who couldn’t get their audio working, and Twitter is a little slow for that.

    Also, the reason I was watching through UStream directly was because live.spaceelevatorgames.com wasn’t loading properly for much of the day – I think it was getting too many hits. So sending even more people there instead may not be the best plan.

  2. Cindy

    Thank you Ted and company for being our eyes and ears at the competition! As the wife of one of the teams it is so hard not being there to cheer everyone on. I know everyone has spent thousands of hours and made many sacrifices for this competition! I really appreciate everything that you do! Keep up the good work!!!!!!!!!!

  3. Ted Semon Post author

    Cindy – thank you – much appreciated.

    Elizabeth – we’re working on enabling Chat again, but I’m only going to do so if I have someone there who can answer questions. We’re working on it. Thanks for the comments about the live… site not working properly. Can I ask what Browser you’re using? Thanks again…

  4. Elizabeth

    I’ve used Firefox and IE. I know about the Twitter feed not working on Firefox, but the problem was mainly that the site is very slow to load. There also is a delay of a minute or two for Twitter posts to update even in IE – not bad for normal Twitter use, but it’s very difficult to use for conversation about what’s going on, echoing of the audio, etc.

    I think you’re also getting a lot of uStream viewers who are not regular SE watchers – you were the #1 or #2 featured site all day yesterday. Those people are very unlikely to stick around today if chat is off, and I assume you would like to keep them.

    If you turn it back on, I’ll try to keep telling people you’re stuck behind a firewall whenever I’m on. I can’t answer all questions by any means, but I’ll try to do my part. 🙂

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