Live Blogging An Event

I’ve often wondered how it would work, and how effective it could be, to live blog an event, and more particularly a sports event.

This morning I have the answer!

I should start at the beginning. Having been part of the team that helps with our biggest sporting event, Ironman Lanzarote, for years, I decided this year that we would live blog it on our Lanzarote Information site. I knew that a lot of athletes and their families read the site, and I figured it would provide them with a good service, and also deliver plenty of traffic.

I approached the person responsible for press and PR, asking for the usual press passes, and I was surprised when she told me that we couldn’t have press credentials if we were planning to live blog. She explained that Ironman are very sensitive to their sponsor’s needs, and were insistent any live coverage should go only on their own site.

I was faced with going ahead with my plan, and therefore being banned from being “inside” at any future Ironman event, or reverting to traditional, post-race reporting.

And then a door opened.

It transpired that the regular writing team were struggling to cover “our” Ironman, as another race was running on the same day in Texas! Armed with a fabulous recommendation from the aforementioned PR person (thanks Isabelle!) I contacted the top man at Ironman and offered our services to provide the live coverage.

He agreed, and we were off and running.

The Software

Ironman.com uses something called Scribble Live, on a subdomain of their own site, for this job. It’s simply brilliant! You can upload any length of post instantly, add photos or video, and we were able to do all of this from both our laptops and through a Blackberry (or iPhone) app. It meant one of us could stay in the press tent corralling information and posting it through the computer, while the other was able to get out onto the course and update from our mobile devices.

It’s as easy to use as Twitter, and it meant, for example, that I was able to get video of the winners coming across the line onto the site within a few minutes of their arrival.

Scribble Live also puts a live video feed onto the page, and we were able to tap into the live TV coverage and stream that on the update page.

There are two features which weren’t enabled by Ironman, and had it been my decision, I would have had them both running. One was a live Twitter feed, using the #imlanza hashtag, and the other was the commenting section. I think both would have got people much more involved with the main page, and resulted in even more traffic.

Information

For anything like this, information is key. We stationed eight volunteers at specific places on the course, provided them with mobile phones and got them to call in with race positions and anecdotal stuff like “John Smith has come through the aid station and is looking tired by determined.”

We were also running the live timing from the athletes anklets on another PC, so we knew where everyone one was, and how their split times were working out.

But one of the best resources was Twitter. Twitter could have been made for this type of thing. We publicised the hashtag well in advance of race day, and it was fabulous for us. We were able to monitor great information coming in from spectators, coaches and other press people, often giving us information well before it had made it’s way through “official” channels.

Summary

It all went very well – I was delighted that we had the opportunity and we’ve had plenty of feedback from people who enjoyed “watching” the event unfold through our updates. We set out to do it differently – traditionally, these live updates tend to focus only on the professional athletes, and they can be a little dry and factual. We spent plenty of time reporting on the age grouper athletes, and we tried to inject a feeling for the emotion, the passion and the atmosphere on the day.

It was a long day – our first post was an atmospheric one, twenty minutes before the swim start at 0640, and we finally signed off at 0004 the following day!

Overall, it proved to me that with good information and the right tools, you can live blog an event, and make it compelling and interesting enough for people to spend time watching it.

Here are some links to more:

1/ Our coverage from the day is here, but I don’t know how long this page will remain up:  http://ironmanlive.com/event/updates.php?race=lanzarote&year=2011

2/ This post explains what Ironman is: Ironman Lanzarote 2011

3/ This post is one reflecting on the event:   Ironman Lanzarote - Reflections and cameos