Streaming for Travel Dreaming — Feedback, Please?

We are hoarse and exhilarated after an amazing week of hosting our tour guides here for our annual guide summit, and throwing our annual tour alumni party (a thousand tour alums came by for our parties Saturday). The days were filled with radio interviews and tour guide workshops, and the evenings were filled with lots of fun and bonding.

Also over this last week, we’ve streamed the live recording sessions for about 30 radio interviews in 12 hours, as well as five “Test Drive a Tour Guide” lectures with live video webcasts (we logged about 2,000 hours of online viewing time). This is an exciting opportunity for us to share our work with travelers outside the Seattle area. (We’re editing the lectures now to be posted in on our website for viewing at any time in the future.)

If you listened to any of the radio interviews (or even called in with a live question), or if you watched any of the talks (including my “Irreverent History of Europe Through the Back Door,” which capped the week off on Saturday evening), please let us know how you think it went. What worked? What didn’t? How can we do it better next time?

Thanks for your input. We are working diligently with all the technology we can muster to share our passion for travel with all of you.

 

Comments

14 Replies to “Streaming for Travel Dreaming — Feedback, Please?”

  1. Rick, I was able to watch the first couple of hours on YouTube and thoroughly enjoyed it! I look forward to watching the rest and listening to the radio interviews, once they become available.

    Your talks inspired me to get my knee fixed so that I can participate in a Rick Steves tour someday.

  2. Rick, I listened to many of the recording sessions and enjoyed hearing the entire conversations. Tim really edits all that discussion skillfully to create your weekly shows. I also watched much of the YouTube presentations on Saturday which I also enjoyed. Each tour director presentation looked interesting but the picture quality was blurred. That may be a result of the low bandwidth.

    I’m ready to travel again.

  3. I watched parts of the Spain and Germany, Austria and Switzerland sessions on youtube, and found the picture quality to be just fine, even on my pathetic laptop!

    My only comment is that on occasion you could tell that the presenter was talking about a photo that was projected for the audience, but the videographer kept the camera on the presenter (with clicker!) so that we heard about the photo but didn’t see it. This only happened maybe 8-10 (ish) times in a session, but I wanted to see ALL of the photos they were talking about! If this could be addressed, then it would be perfect.

    All in all it was a great opportunity for those of us who couldn’t make it to Edmonds to be involved. Thank you for including us! :)

  4. I watched some of Smith’s presentation about France and found it helpful as a way to winnow out areas of low interest. Crowds are a definite deal breaker for me so I go when and where others don’t. Versailles, for example is much better visited in the off season to avoid long lines and pickpockets. Versailles is also one of the best examples of crass excess on the planet so you may want to just skip it.

  5. Rick, We took two of your tours last summer “Best of Paris” and “Germany, Austria and Switzerland” and loved them. We wish we could have made it up to the reunion on Sat., but watching the presentations was the next best thing! Thanks so much for making it possible. We look forward to our next (7th) tour.
    Teri and Bill

  6. I am booked on your Istanbul tour this year and look forward to see the lecture on Turkey when it is posted on your website.

  7. Great idea Rick! Video quality was just fine. Hope you will post these videos in the library for our intellect on demand!

  8. Enjoyed the ones I saw, but the sound quality went bad towards the end, and then it wouldn’t work at all on my iPad, although it was still running on my desktop

  9. Hey Rick – I really enjoy these webinars – and always enjoy your presentations and fun style. Always something new to the story and photos!

    The only one with any issue was your last preso – some of the sound had issues for part (echo sounds, then no sound) – it was eventually fixed.

    Anyways – its great! It would also be great to get to download a pdf of the session guides you hand out if possible?

  10. How hard would it be for you to stream the weekly classes on Thursday evenings and Saturday afternoons? I would guess it would be easy to also have a way for the viewers of these classes all over the country/world to ask questions via e-mail during the session.

  11. Since you asked for feedback I would say that while I ALWAYS stream your talks live and love them, I was often frustrated this time that the speaker would be talking about a slide, but the camera stayed on the speaker the entire time and I never got to see the referenced place, scenery, food, etc… Overall, however, it was excellent and made me want to travel TODAY!

  12. I would have loved to watch it, but being in Australia it was all at very bad time. I was also going away with my family before the end of the sessions, but I have tried to watch it since I returned and cannot find this years talks on Utube or facebook. Have they been loaded to the permanent collection yet? I have watched all of the DVds of the seasons 1 – latest about to go to air. love them. following lots of tips. 1 complaint. I do know that the very vast majority of your listeners are American, or perhaps Canadian as i have seen been said lately BUT could you use Western or non european just so we fell included! PS I think it is time you came down under and made us all aware of you. hOpe to do a tour with you one year, right now doing it independent and loving all of your tips.

  13. I will be doing a research paper on Richard Brautigan for my juinor Honors English class. This is my first time visiting the site, and I haven’t had much of a chance to look around. However, I’d like to thank you in advance for all of the work you have put into managing this site, and I hope we can keep in touch for the sake of my grade. Arec Ligon

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