Firstly, I’d like to thank everyone who made this year’s LoveFest possible. Guiv, Jason, Kyte, the LiteBrite crew, everyone involved with the float, and all the partygoers who set a record attendance. For those of you unable to attend and who tuned in to watch the webcast, I sincerely apologize.
The Story:
What happens when 90,000 kids descend upon the civic center plaza to dance, meet friends, and use their cell phones? The same thing that happens every year at Apple’s WWDC when thousands of iPhones gather in the Moscone Center…AT&T has a meltdown.
This year, I decided to produce the webcast using the Kyte platform. Kyte is a site that allows users to record, upload, and broadcast live video straight through their 3G enabled cell phones. Because there is no WiFi available during the parade or at the Bill Graham Civic, the live feed is broadcast using a high speed data network, such as AT&T’s 3G, or Verizon’s EVDO which we used last year to similar effect.
Things started smoothly early in the day, but as the Spundae/Skills/Ultra Records float got further down Market Street and more people started showing up, everything began to slow down.
Once the float parked in the civic center, we were surrounded by thousands of people making calls and sending texts and picture messages. It also didn’t help that cell signal is notoriously weak where our float was parked, a fact I wish I knew earlier.
As a result, the AT&T data network was so incredibly bogged down we could not maintain a solid connection for more than a few seconds. Even my personal phone (also on AT&T) wasn’t able to send or recive any texts or calls for a good 5 hours.
The AfterParty was no different. Despite some missing coordination and over-eager security personnel, we still weren’t able to broadcast much footage.
The Good News:
The Noika N-Series cell phones provided by Kyte record a lot of video footage. This footage is still on the three phones, and will be uploaded to throughout the day today. It’s not live and not 100% complete, but there are a lot of good clips from the weekend’s festivities to enjoy.
In Conclusion:
Next year, we can only expect more attendees and even more stress on the cell networks. For future broadcasts we will have to either establish a reliable WiFi internet connection or hope AT&T can build up their infrastructure to handle such large gatherings of phones in one place.
If you think it’s frustrating not being able to view a quality webcast, imagine watching thousands of viewers chatting about it, wondering why you - the producer - can’t just “fix it.”
It was a bit of a let down, but there’s still some great video to be seen. Keep an eye on the embed below as more clips start coming in, and consider this all the more reason to be there in person next year!
