Yesterday was Varsity 2012 between Staffordshire University and Keele University. It was the fourth year of the event and the first time I was involved in the coverage of it for One Media Group.

Being the technical manager, and sorting out the new website, meant that it was my responsibility that the sports team were able to do their job and cover the event using the radio and website.

In this post I’ll talk about how we went about using technology to cover the event and also what resources I pooled together to make the day possible.

If you have you thoughts about how I did things or would like to ask more specific questions, then please do feel free to contact me.

The Website

Since we’ve moved away from MSL and on to WordPress, this gave us a great opportunity to see what the website was capable of and how it would react in a live situation.

The OMG Player got a once over, with an extra tab with the Twitter widget for #StaffsVarsity and a Tweet button for the hashtag as well. Nothing too exciting there but it did allow listeners to follow what was happening without leaving the player.

There’s a dedicated page at omgstaffs.com/varsity that was home to our preview articles and some other information about what we were doing on the day.

The main feature of the day was the Varsity 2012 Live Blog.

Snapshot of the Live Blog

In previous years and with other events, the Students’ Union had used CoveritLive, however there were two things that put me off it: you can’t customise it massively and when the event is over, accessing the posts is hard. Some might argue that you don’t need to customise how it looks if it works and is the information relevant after the event? For me total control over what we could and couldn’t do was what I wanted. Also for us as a student media group, we need to show what we’ve done and how it impacts the students on campus. Having a record of what we’ve done during a massive sporting event is the best way to do that.

So what did we use instead of CoveritLive? A WordPress plugin called Live Blogging and it does exactly what it says on the tin. There are a few bugs with it; you can’t actually change the time in which it refreshes the post and it refreshes the whole page, not just the ‘live’ section. However I managed to find ways around this. Others have mentioned other issues, but for what we were doing, it wasn’t a problem. It did require some CSS stylings and rules to ensure that content looked correct, but this meant I was able to control what it looked like.

We had one dedicated sports journalist (Ben Mouncer) doing that and he did a great job. Over 100 posts throughout the day! And it’s important that Ben is able to show this to others from an employment point of view. That’s why the blog is still there, but not in a live state. I just copied all the static source and posted it in the post body. You can view it here on the OMG website.

#StaffsVarsity on Twitter

Social Media

As I’ve mentioned already, the official hashtag on Twitter for the Staffs team was #StaffsVarsity and we were able to display that in our studio. Also our Twitter account was tweeting with the hashtag. The main Staffordshire University Twitter account also picked up on us using it and tweeted about our Live Blog which we announced via Twitter.

Periodically we updated Facebook with short pieces of information, but for us Twitter was the main puller.

Also half of our website traffic for the day came from referrals, with Facebook providing half of that traffic.

The Radio Outside Broadcast

So technically we weren’t actually ‘outside’ but we were certainly outside our studios in Stoke and outside of our comfort zone! We were given conference room number three within the Keele University Sports Centre, which was the biggest they had to offer. I had travelled to the sports centre several times in the months leading up to Varsity to ensure that we would have sufficient internet access. I arranged with their IT department to have two wired connections and some WiFi codes provided. When I arrived they had provided me with exactly what I’d asked for and also more WiFi logins that I had asked for!

So what equipment did I end up begging for, borrowing or using my own instead:

• Soundcraft mixing desk – 12 channels
• 3x AKG D130 microphones
• 4x headphones
• Headphone distribution box
• 2x laptops (1x Windows Vista, 1x Windows 7)
• Software: Audacity, AudioTX (with USB key), DropBox, JazlerShow, ORBAN Loudness Meter, Skype, TeamViewer
• 1x Amp with a top speaker and a bass
• 1x Radio controlled clock (stolen from One Media Radio Studio 2)
• Lots of XLRs
• Various cables to connect things

None of the above equipment cost me a thing! The mixing desk, amp, speakers, XLRs and speaker cables all came from a system that the Drama Society use. Some headphones and the clock came from the OMG studios. The rest I booked out from the university media centre.

On Monday afternoon I got all the kit together and set it up in the SU boardroom to ensure everything would go together as planned. I drew up a plan and it looked something a bit like this:

Click to enlarge

So a quick run through of what everything did.

The reason for having an amp and speakers, wasn’t to have monitoring within the studio. This was mainly because of the fact it wasn’t a broadcast desk and the mics being up wouldn’t cut it out. Instead it lead to a speaker outside the studio which put our output in the corridor where people were going between venues.

I think the reason for headphones and microphones speak for themselves!

The laptops didn’t have any extra hardware or USB devices (apart from an external mouse and HASP key for AudioTX) and were as provided. I could’ve done it with any laptops, but I didn’t really want to use my personal ones. I used my own laptop for the streaming and the audio laptop was provided by a member of staff at the SU.

For streaming, the Student Union own two licences for AudioTX. The licences are stored on a HASP USB device so that we can transfer it between computers. I tested it many times internally and was able to test it at Keele before the broadcast day. Back at our studios in Stoke we had a computer receiving the audio which then went onto our stream. I used Loudness Meter just before broadcast to make sure our levels were fine.

Fortunately we didn’t have any problems with this laptop and it didn’t cut out once! I’ve been told it’s the first year we were on air for the whole duration of the daytime fixtures!

Our audio laptop had two jobs really; work as a phone and play packages/jingles.

For a phone we set up a Skype account and purchased a Skype Number so reporters could ring in and tell us what was happening at different fixtures. I also added as many phone numbers as I could into the contacts so that when someone rang it told us who it was. I turned off all default sounds. I simply took the monitor out from the desk to the microphone/line in on the laptop so Skype could hear the presenters and the headphones went into fader 5 on the desk for the presenters to control.

I preloaded lots of imaging that Sam Morter had produced for us and popped it in JazlerShow. It’s a great piece of free software which I remember using when I started out in radio at the age of 12! It’s quick, simple and did the job perfectly fine everytime.

Sam was also producing packages using audio that reports had put together. To get them across the studio to our presenters I installed DropBox so Sam could log into the web version, upload the audio and it would be to our presenters pretty swiftly. I then set Audacity to the default audio software so it would play quickly and effortlessly.

Both JazlerShow and Audacity played out the same output as Skype which meant we practically left the fader up all day!

Here’s some pictures of our setup in the Sport Centre.

After 5:30pm, we left to go to the Newcastle Town Football Club to do live commentary of the Men’s Football fixture.

For this we ditched the amplifier and audio laptop and just had three mics, four headphones and the stream out.

Unfortunately my mobile broadband dongles were playing up and I ended up connecting my netbook to my HTC’s WiFi hotspot. It did dip out every so often but overall we were still broadcasting well.

Here’s some photos of the football setup.

Final Thoughts

The feedback from the SU, sports team and other students was that the day was a great success for the media team (even though our sports teams loss Varsity as a whole!).

I’m very happy with the day and look forward to listening back to the highlights packages. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to improve on this year’s coverage by working with the team again next year!

The theme was ‘out of the box’ from ThemeForest and what I’ve done is add some of the functionality and change how it looks a bit.

The main function that I wanted to add to the site was who was on air and how that was displayed on the site.

I’ve worked my good friend and colleague Christopher Smith for several years and what has become known to us as the ‘on air’ script has helped us both massively.

The basis of the script is a text file which contains each day’s schedule. Each line consists of the time the show is on air and the presenter/show name , all separated by pipes. A PHP file then reads this text file and uses the pipes to divide the information up and assigns it to a string which is printed. There are several different files which do different things; one to see what’s on air now and then ones to display a particular day’s schedule.

When we started using the script we would just simply include the relevant files where we wanted them, but now we both work with WordPress and wanted to integrate it a bit better.

Something I wanted to do was use some AJAX to update the on air information without the user refreshing the page. Christopher found the AJAX which the radio station he was working with used to update their now playing song. We modified it slightly and now on the OMG website it is used in the header to display the on air now and next show information.

My code is different from Christopher’s as I wanted to display it slightly differently. The AJAX is reloading a PHP file which has the listen and webcam button as well as includes for the on air now and next PHP files, which read the schedule text file. This file is reloaded on any OMG page every 60 seconds.

Now for the schedule page of the website. I didn’t want to include an iframe in a page entry (like I did last year for Cre8 Radio) as it wasn’t very tidy and was a pain to maintain! So Christopher and I worked together on creating a page template that we could apply to our schedule pages. All I did on the template was include the seven ‘day’ PHP files and styled them so they looked good.

To edit the text file that would contain all the on air information I wanted something that was easy and plain. So I installed CMS from Scratch in a directory and created a single text file that those with the client password could edit. It does take users outside of  WordPress to edit a single file, but I felt this was easier than trying to direct people to the theme editor page within WordPress (mainly because I didn’t want to give them Admin rights to do so!).

However, I wanted to see if there was anything I could add to this. On websites such as BBC Radio 1, where it tells you who is currently on air in the header, it’s also a link to their show page. What if I could do this as well in the header of the OMG website?

I dived back in to the PHP files which were figuring out what the on air text file meant. I was easily able to add another pipe for it to read, which would contain a URL to print. Originally the button span was printed in the file which the AJAX was reading, but I needed to change it so that the span was printed in the on air now PHP file. It was a bit messy for a while as I tried to figure out where things were being printed.

My next thought was ‘what if that presenter/show doesn’t have a page we can link to?’ This required much more work as I figured out what PHP function to use to see if a string was empty. I eventually used the empty function and told it that if it was empty to point the link to the schedule page. On the schedule page, the show links would also display in the presenter and show names.

Another use that I hope to use the show links for is when the news and sports shows are on, is that the link can point to the news and sports pages. Also when we cover Varsity in a couple of months time, those links can all point to our live blogs and Varsity homepage.

  

That’s pretty much what I did over Christmas to enhance the OMG website! I will also be using much of that code and integration for the Cre8 Radio website when it comes back on air in May/June.

All of these changes will be activated once the new branding comes in (which should be within a week or two of writing this).

I am looking forward to 2012 as it means there are lots of things to look forward to and I hope many things will continue to develop in the year to come!

The Rebrand of OMG

In January 2012, OMG will be launching a new logo and rebranding itself. I’ve already redone the website and in January I’ll be launching a new player as a web app. Also we’ll start planning for Varsity and also a possible world record attempt.

Staffs Uni vs. Keele Varsity

Varsity is a great chance for OMG to show what we can really do. It will be a real test of the website’s ability to handle a large amount of users as well as the ability of our contributors to post great articles. It also brings challenges as to how we will broadcast from Keele and get it back to the studio.

Cre8 Radio is on air again

I was thrilled to be part of Cre8 Radio last year and this year I get the opportunity to be part of it again. I’m looking forward to being part of the team and also broadcasting on FM again. Hopefully I’ll be able to present a bit more this year and muscle in on some of the subjects broadcast.

Essex International Jamboree 2012

In October I found out that I had been accepted to be part of the EIJ radio broadcasting team. As we go towards August and the broadcast I’ll be assigned my role (hopefully presenting!), preparing show content and getting to know my fellow members of the team.

Continued work at Cross Rhythms & Staffs Union

I will start 2012 continuing to work with Cross Rhythms and Staffordshire University Students’ Union. At Cross Rhythms I will continue to work with them on their social media and also develop the website (where I can). At the Students’ Union I continue my job as Web Designer. No doubt I’ll work on Varsity integration with the OMG website and also the world record attempt (if that goes ahead!).

That’s my work and volunteering roles pretty much covered, but my continuing relationship with my girlfriend Amy is what I’m looking forward to the most! We’ve been together over a year and a half and we’ve shared some amazing experiences together and I hope that they may continue throughout 2012.

If you want to keep up to date with the emails I send out (Oliver Needham Updates if you will), then click here.

According to reports from students and people around the university, OMG has a ‘rebrand’ almost every two years. But this year, the team didn’t want to completely lose the brand that had already been built up.

The team’s aim for the rebrand is to make it more appealing to students. The main thrust of this will be the redesigned logo which shows more creativity, as we are a creative group on campus. The old logo didn’t reflect this.

My part in this was helping to redesign the website. I was asked at the beginning of the summer if it was possible and necessary to move the OMG website off the Staffs Union website and content management system, MSL. I suggested WordPress straight away. When the rebrand idea was announced, I immediately knew that the website could be an integral part of this.

The new website is hosted by a professional company and I am able to do what I want with it. The website is simply WordPress with a theme on it. Since the hosting being available, I’ve been able to play with it until there was something that I and the management were happy with. I’ve also worked with the Promotions team to ensure that it has the best effect possible.

One big thing that I’m excited about with moving to WordPress is that it means we can continually develop the website. Also it means that the students that are going to be using it to post articles should be familiar with it, as broadcast journalist students who post to StaffsLive use WordPress very regularly.

The theme that I’m using has some great features such as additional review information, YouTube and SoundCloud embed short codes and also built in share options.

The new website will be on www.omgstaffs.com and as part of the rebrand we are not using any other variations of the website address, including in our studio email address.

Click here to watch the programme on BBC iPlayer (Available until Friday 19th August 2011)

So over the past week or so there’s been talk of all the riots in London and other parts of the UK.

In response the Prime Minister came back from his holidays and the BBC decided to do a Question Time and a Young Persons’ Question Time Riot Special.

On Tuesday I filled out an application form to become part of the audience and possibly ask a question on the show. I didn’t expect to hear anything from the show; I don’t think anyone ever does! But on Friday I received a call from the makers of Young Persons’ Question Time, asking me to be part of the audience. I jumped at the chance to be part of a piece of history. So my mum drove me to Peterborough, where I caught a train straight to London. I was outside the BBC Television Centre on Wood Lane by 5:30pm!

As is with all BBC audiences, you have the obligitary bag search and metal detector routine. But after that we were all sent to a conference room under the world famous Television Centre. It was pretty hot and stuffy and all the YP audience was in there! They did provide us with tea, coffee, water, biscuits and KitKats. This was also a chance for us to write down a questionm with a chance that we might be able to ask it.

With less than an hour to go before the show went out live on BBC Three at 8:30pm, we were taken to Studio 8. Being a media student I was facinated to see what the set up was going to be.

As usual there was the teared seating where most of the audience would sit, and as I was close to the front of the line into the studio, I was placed on the end of the second row from the front (on the left as you looked at the panel).

The floor manager introduced himself and decided to get us to help test their mics and cameras. Five members of the audience were picked and they sat in place of the panel. The floor manager then went around the room and get us all to answer the question ‘If you won the £116 million lottery prize, what would you do with it?’ Laughter ripped through the audience as both the panel and audience members answer the question. Then on walked the main man, the host of the show; Richard Bacon, most well known for his talk/discussion show on BBC Radio Five Live.

He started to get to know a few in the audience but also asked some questions to get our brains thinking. He managed to get a good reaction and said that he hoped we were like that when the programme was live.

It came to 8:30pm and the show started with Richard introducing the panel and getting the first question. I was rather excited to witness what was about to happen, even if I wasn’t actually caught on screen! Most of the audience was rowdy and almost everyone had an opinion. I think Richard did very well to control the audience, I don’t know anyone who could of done better.

I do think that some of the outburst were un-needed and people spoke of respect; at times there didn’t seem to be any in the studio from the audience!

The show was trying a new format; Richard was not placed behind the desk with the panel, but on his feet walking amungst the audience. Maybe if he had been behind the desk, I don’t think he would’ve had such command of the audience.

Even though I did have my hand up for ages (and even shouted out once!) I didn’t get the chance to put my view forward. But I am thrilled that I rushed from Spalding to London to be part of a great show and audience.

At the end I got the chance to shake the hand of Richard Bacon and tell him he did a great job. You weren’t supposed to take photos, but as a media student I felt I should anyway!

And if you was wondering where I was sat throughout the whole thing, I was on the end of the second row from the front, on the left as you looked at the panel. To prove it, here’s me in the closing titles:

Here’s a few of photos of the set as I went out and also as I went around BBC Television Centre in London.

KingsStock is a micro music event held deep in the countryside of rural Cambridgeshire and aims to promote young and upcoming bands who take inspiration from their Faith.

In the lead up to KingsStock I’ve been updating the website with the line up and also promoting the festival using Twitter and Facebook. On the Thursday, the Main Stage went up on site and I was able to produce an amazing time lapse of the construction and is now posted on the KingsStock YouTube page.

It was an amazing weekend! Just to see so many young, talent people perform in front of a lovely crowd of people.

It was planned that the Main Stage performances would be live streamed to the KingsStock website on the Friday and Saturday evenings. There were a few technical issues, lack of internet connection being the main one, on the Friday evening meaning that not much of the evening was broadcast. On Saturday, fortunately I was able to broadcast a lot more of the proceedings, which not too much interruption. On the Saturday evening I also compered the Main Stage.

The official(ish) count of visitors on the Saturday evening (the main event) was about 186. It was a great turn out.

As part of the promotion, we were contacted by BBC Radio Cambridgeshire and they asked that our organiser, James Stevens, went on their Sunday Breakfast Show (which focused on Faith topics). James was on air about 7:40am, after not much sleep. You can listen to the interview on the KingsStock Press page.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting photos and videos to the KingsStock website, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

I read an article by The New Web about how their users are saying they would leave Facebook to use Google+ instead. You can read it here: stke.info/lfzsq

I have a Google+ account but I won’t be dropping Facebook or Twitter to use it. Here’s why:

1. Yet ANOTHER social networking site I need to convince people to join

For me that’s the biggest problem. I have problems trying to convince my friends to use Twitter. Plus will my Mum really want to use Google+? I don’t think it’s as friendly enough for my mum to get along with it. I got in just so I could see what was going on but I don’t think many of my actual, IRL friends will want to use this.

2. What information so I post in which circle?!

So I’ve got friends in my circles, but now I’ve got to decide which circle I post to! I like Twitter and Facebook because I can share the same information with everyone. If I didn’t want certain people to see it, I simply don’t post it. If you don’t want people to know about it, simply don’t post it!

3. What do I focus on posting?

I’ve got my friends on there and put them in circles and decided what I’m going to post, but what stops me from getting distracted? I like Twitter because those 140 characters keep me to the point and make sure I can’t waffle (unlike this post!). I just think that if I’m going to post on Google+ it’s going to be complete rubbish and irrelevant.

4. Will Google+ become a platform for companies?

I don’t think so. A company will then need your Google email address and permission for you to be added to a circle, whereas on Twitter & Facebook users don’t have to give any permissions! I might be wrong here but I don’t think it’s a good platform for this kind of interaction.

So if you hadn’t guessed, I’m not massively into Google+. I just don’t think that the ‘regular, non geeky’ internet users will migrate.

The ONE feature that I might use on Google+ is the Hangouts. I like that you can have up to 10 people with webcam and voices! This is something which Skype currently charges for! (Even then you can only have up to four.)

For now, I will be sticking to Facebook (which I’m using less and less) and Twitter.

So firstly, what is Radioplayer?

Radioplayer is an online audio player which gives you access to live, on demand and podcast radio from hundreds of stations in the UK. All of the stations on Radioplayer use the same player so that the experience is simple and familiar for users, no matter which station they listen to.

The first stations on the player were those from the BBC, Global Radio (including the Heart network), GMG Radio and the Absolute Radio network. These were also the founding stations of the project.

You can read more about Radioplayer at their website: www.radioplayer.co.uk

The most exciting thing for me is that Cross Rhythms will be the first Christian radio station on Radioplayer!

Now let’s get down to what I’ve been doing over the past two weeks!

So on a on Tuesday 21^st June, I was asked by Richard (the head of IT at Cross Rhythms) if I would be prepared to start work on CR’s Radioplayer console. I LEAPED at the chance to get involved with this as I had told Richard about it as soon as I caught wind of it.

I hadn’t been given a deadline, but they knew that I would only be there for two weeks before I left them for the summer. So my personal target was to get it completed and on the Radioplayer database by today.

My first step was to gather all the information I needed before generating the station’s meta data which would be used in the search engine RP has. This was a bit of a task and took me several hours to do; this was before I had got to any actual creating of stuff!

Next I used the console generator that RP had provided. This gave me a great starting block and provided me with the outline and actual player. All I had to do now was customize it!

Cross Rhythms already had a great player so what I did was to take many of the great elements from the current player and put them inside RP. Fortunately Richard had spent lots of time ensuring that his console was technically sound. This meant that all of this made my job a lot easier in RP, all I had to do was design and style it.

One of the easiest things was to insert our current Listen Again feature into the RP OnDemand facility. It worked seamlessly! (Much to the surprise of myself and Richard.) All I had to do now was ensure that users were able to get back to the live stream.

I learnt a lot more about PHP whilst doing this and it was great to have to work to someone else’s design specification (the one which RP gave us so we didn’t destroy the player!).

Today we had to iron out a few little niggles before we were able to show it to the station manager and also the marketing department. They had a few suggestions and they helped shape a few areas I was a bit unsure about. But by about 4:30pm we had completed it!

So it took me 6 days, over two weeks, 9am to 5pm each day. It was well worth it!

Screenshots of the Cross Rhythms Radioplayer console (click to enlarge)

The Radioplayer console is not going to currently be replacing the current Cross Rhythms console.

At the time of writing this, unfortunately, the Radioplayer console I produced is not live on the system. This is due to a couple of things, which I don’t completely understand. Either way the console is ready to go on there but all I can do is tell you it will be there soon. I will update this post when it is ready for you to use.

Update: On Monday 6th July, the Cross Rhythms Radioplayer console went live! You can now view it by searching ‘Cross Rhythms’ in any Radioplayer console or by going to www.radioplayer.co.uk and using their Browse function.