Back to Basics: Lessons from Producing a Livestream

When ChenMed wanted to celebrate its 100th medical center opening, they asked for ideas on how to celebrate this huge milestone. My first thought? Let's go LIVE on social! I knew it was not going to be an easy undertaking, and I was not equipped with the right manpower. But I knew if we kept it simple using our resources wisely, we could make it happen.

ChenMed's grand opening for its medical centers are always special. There's always a special local feature. This 100th grand opening was happening in Charlotte, North Carolina -- home to good Carolina BBQ and grammy-award winner Anthony Hamilton. I had to go back to my broadcasting and producing skills in order to pull off a successful livestream. I organized all the information, drafted a show rundown with guests to interview and other videos to fill dead air, figured out internet issues (using hardwire instead WiFi despite IT's insistence that it was strong enough), hired a camera crew along with audio engineer, designed TV graphics and utilized our video podcast platform, Streamyard, to broadcast onto several social media platforms, gathered different team members to be on my live-streaming team (internal comms, PR, and the New Markets team), and planned for battery backup. I had everything ready for the every scenario. What could go wrong, right?

We promoted that the livestream would start at 10:30 am EST despite whether or not the ribbon cutting was going to start on time. As we suspected, the grand opening ceremony was behind, but we started anyway with the backup plan of interviewing leaders. After several leaders were interviewed, we realized the ceremony was still going to be delayed even more. I had the team help me find more doctors, community and company leaders to interview to kill time. As time went on, we baked under the hot summer sun... and so did our streaming computer. Before we knew it, it wasn't the internet breaking down on us, the computer was streaming was OVER HEATING! Yes, we never expected to be in the sun that long. We went to break and I had everyone grab papers and fans to cool down the computer. Thanks to gracious team member who provided a screen to cover the computer. After what seemed like an eternity, we were back on air and on time for the ceremony to begin. We all worked together to make this livestream as successful as possible.

I walked away feeling a little defeated but still accomplished. We livestreamed a huge milestone for the company! We gained several hundreds of followers that day and our engagement skyrocketed. The hard work paid off, but not without a three lessons learned:

1. Collaboration

My team had my back! Although we were made of different departments, we were one team that day. I wasn't afraid nor too proud to ask for help. If I needed another person to help fill time, the team went inside to search a willing candidate or several team members fanning down a computer.

2. Control What You Can Control

We did a lot of planning, even for the smallest interruption, but I never would have imagined that the ceremony would have ran 40 minutes behind schedule! But I could only control what I could control. I had to rely on interviews to fill time and my team to help me come up with ideas. Even with all the conversations with professionals and live-streaming research, the topic of overheating never came up. However, instead of freaking out, I remained calm and asked the team to work together to fan down the computer.

3. Remember & Raise Your Glass

After all that hard work and live-streaming mistakes, we all took it in and cheered. I ran into our Chief Marketing Officer at the airport, and he mentioned to me that despite what seemed like setbacks during the livestream, it was a successful event because we achieved something that the company never thought possible: "Michelle, we have 100 medical centers open and we livestreamed it so the would could celebrate with us." He was right.All I can do now is look back to improve future events and raise my glass and toast to it.