Budget09: the tech take and lessons learned

The UK 2009, Budget is the first time that many of the modern media technologies have been used in anger. As I write this, the casting of the runes among the experts has yet to be fully played out but a few preliminary observations can be made.

It was clear the general media had grasped the value of using services like embedded video streaming, Twitter, inline text updates and aggregation services, especially CoverItLive (as I used here) as a way of delivering, disseminating and crowd sourcing opinion. Some, like Channel 4 also offered a ‘snow cloud‘ – a crude but effective representation of the words that people considered important during the Chancellor’s speech.

I had hoped to include some video coverage but found that running TweetDeck, CoverItLive, Skype, web browser and a video service like Ustream or Kyte.tv started to make my system unstable. The BBC’s live video coverage was superb and as a believer in using what’s available, it didn’t make sense to attempt creating an audience for something that would have added almost no value. However, there were a number of things I did do that allowed me to quickly engage and create an audience.

First up I used CoverItLive as a way of aggregating Twitter generated content. I also offered hashtags #budget09 and #budget2009 so that people marking their Twitter content accordingly would show up in the CiL stream. After a couple of hours it became obvious that #budget09 was the most favoured so rather than try and grab absolutely everything I stuck with that hasthtag. I was able to use Twitter Search to discover sources that may not have been using #budget09 but which would add value. Apart from this place, I initially pasted the CiL code to IT Counts but in the expectation it would go to TaxNews. That could have been confusing but the ITC and TN ’stories’ surrounding the use of CiL were different so amending the story at ITC wasn’t really an issue.

CiL has a rich palette of options including the avbility to drive polls, take in comments whic can be moderated and embed pictures and video. I only used the polling and commenting system.

What was achieved?

I added a further twist by including eventtrack. This aggregated a variety of content for an event including images and video, providing some stats along the way. I learned for instance thatit found 445 mentions of #budget09, 42 images and 18 videos. At the time of writing, the CiL coverage totals in excess of 1350 page views. That’s a creditable ‘performance’ given that the only ‘advertising’ was a few pimp Tweets encouraging people to go to the CiL links. All these numbers will continue to rise but we’re at the back end of the day.

In tandem, Tax News had a single post Have Your Say entry which attracted a range of comments and helped to raise some critical issues. It generated about 300 page views.

While these numbers may seem small, they are an incredible achievement when you consider ‘we’ were up against the big name players like Channel 4, Sky TV and the BBC. At one point in the morning, we were definitely beating all three networks in terms of delivered content. We were also able to ‘grab’ links from the likes of KPMG and BDO, whose coverage and analysis were pin sharp.

Krishna at Channel 4 contacted us for a Twitter ‘follow’ as did the BBC’s Have Your Say people. That’s gratifying.

At one stage #budget09 was the no.2 trending hashtag in Twitter – so we were definitley getting noticed.

What did I learn?

• Being first out the gate with a hashtag with which people could readily identify made a huge difference. So much so that I started the streams almost 6 hours before I had originally intended. In the process, I missed about 30 minutes of Tweets but that doesn’t seem to matter.
• Early crowd sourcing for such a niche site is essential but having a decent sized following definitely helped.
• CiL specific conversations were sparse. That was true on other sites. The AccountingWeb ‘version’ (they copied our idea ) drew no conversation at all.
• Having an extra computer would have helped considerably. If I’d had a spare machine then I could have done early video streaming before giving away to the primary source.
• Moderation could have been avoided. This was the biggest drain on time because I was concerned that comments might end up ’salty’ – not something ICAEW would be pleased about. As it happened, apart from a few wags who tossed in the odd amusing epithet, there was nothing I would say was unsafe. In the future, I would not moderate and so free up valuable time and attention for other activities.
• Driving most of the applications singlehandedly is hard work. It can be done but it is very difficult to give all services the attention they need unless you have a solid understanding of the services.
• Having a precreated tax calculator would have been a huge win. We didn’t have that.
• Neither did we have email-in facilities to field questions. We were too reliant on commenting in the various streams.
• One person with the right tools and the right knowledge can drive traffic, cull a lot of knowledge and add value back to others very quickly. I’m not convinced we were in a position to provide analysis quickly enough even though a solid job was done.
• We were able to highlight points of intererst very quickly and draw attention to them.
• The general comments matter. They provide a sense of mood among those who are following the event and allow you to frame appropriate questions and commentary in real time.
• Prepare earlier. This was very much a last minute thing with my dreaming up what needed to be done, almost on the fly the previous evening. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that but it was a tad chaotic. Given the event ran over 8+ hours, it was also extremely tiring!
• There were a few other elements but they’re a bit of ’secret sauce.’

Tagged as: Channel 4, CoverItLive, TweetDeck, Twitter