In this episode, B and Lutie talk about the remote and hybrid work landscape as employers and employees navigate a possible return to so-called normalcy as well as rising screen time and its implications. Then, B and AMT Lab Podcast Producer Angela Johnson chat with AMT Lab contributor Andrew Wolverton about the popular livestreaming software Streamlabs OBS and tips for embracing livestreaming technology.

Resources

• Association between screen time and depression among US adults

• Broadway “Tweet Seats”

• Building a Hybrid Workplace: What We've Learned – Fractured Atlas

• Companies that make people return to the office will lose employees

• Consumers now average 4.2 hours per day in apps, up 30% from 2019 – Tech Crunch

• Forest app

• No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

• Standard OBS

• Stream Ninja

• StreamElements

• Streamlabs Discord

• Streamlabs OBS

• StreamYard

• Winning the war for talent in the post-pandemic world – Future Forum

Transcript

[Musical intro, fades out] 

B: Welcome to the Let's Talk series of Tech in the Arts, the podcast for the Arts Management and Technology Lab. My name is B Crittenden, and I'm the Technology and Interactive Content Manager.  

Lutie: And I'm Lutie Rodriguez, the Chief Editor of Research.  

B: Each month, we review trending stories and discussions with topics such as streaming, artificial intelligence, marketing, social media, inclusion, fundraising, and much more. Our goal is to exchange ideas, bring awareness, and stay on top of the trends. In this episode, Lutie and I talk about the remote and hybrid work landscape, as employers and employees navigate a possible return to so-called normalcy. We also talk about trends and implications of our time spent in front of a screen. Then, AMT Lab Podcast Producer Angela Johnson and I chat with AMT Lab contributor Andrew Wolverton, who gives us his take on the popular livestreaming software Streamlabs OBS. Hope you enjoy this episode.  

[Musical intro, fades in] 

Since the Covid-19 vaccine became widely available in the U.S. and cases started going down this past spring and summer, white collar employees that were previously primarily in person and then shifted to remote work during the pandemic have been really forced to start thinking about how and when they will transition out of their remote work environments back to having employees work in the office. And this probably sounds pretty familiar to a lot of U.S.-based arts and culture organizations, many of whom are existing in sort of this, like, in-between where they're staging performances, or planning seasons, or opening exhibitions, and where frontline staff is on site and in person but whose back-office staff are still working completely remotely or with limited access to the offices. And many organizations are in the state or have been in the state of assessing their departmental needs and even offering hybrid work where people are in person some days, but working remotely other days. There have been multiple surveys that have been conducted in the last year, especially in the last six months or so, to sort of assess how employers are feeling about this but mostly how employees are feeling about these different options that they have available to them now that they've sort of gotten this taste of remote work.

It seems like the hybrid model is largely appealing to the majority of U.S. workers. A survey conducted by the Future Forum, which is a consortium that was launched by Slack Technologies, and they found that 93% of knowledge workers want a flexible schedule and 76% want flexibility in where they work. So this is, like, you know, something that people have experienced and want to carry forward with them. They also found one in five knowledge workers is likely to jump to a new company in the next year and more than half—56%—are open to looking for a new position. So if their current organization isn't willing to offer them a flexible hybrid work situation, they're willing to look elsewhere. We're in this time of in-between. A lot of organizations have already implemented their new policies, some are creating their new policies, and I think a lot of organizations, especially in arts and culture organizations, especially ones that are oriented around the season that starts in September, it seems like Labor Day is sort of this flagged day of, like, “here's when we started our new model.” 

So, I think it would be good to chat about what this means. I think technology is really at the center of all of this and how we are going to transition to making new models work for us. One of the things that was found in the Future Forum survey that I referenced was that digital infrastructure is really what makes the big difference in terms of an organization being able to find success. And that if we're looking at a hybrid model, in-office time should really be dedicated to in-person collaboration and team building, but actually getting individual work done can be done via digital channels, which is where people can be working remotely. And that frequency of communication within teams has a huge impact on employee satisfaction and that knowledge workers who use, sort of like I said, this digital infrastructure to communicate all throughout the day tend to have better satisfaction with their working situation than those who don't communicate enough. So, Lutie, I'd love to hear from you. In your experience working, are there any tools that jump out to you as helping with this frequency of communication? 

Lutie: Yeah, I've used both Slack and Microsoft Teams for the messaging feature where you can essentially talk to people who you're working with at any time, all day. And that's often what people do using both of those channels. I like it because you're able to get a quick response without what can sometimes feel like a burden of sending someone an email or, like, setting up a quick phone call. You can just send something casually and get a quick response. I also think that's the downside of it. You can be kind of bombarded with these quick messages. You're getting all these notifications maybe when you're trying to work on a different project if you have your notifications set up where you do get alerts every time you get a message. So, that definitely is a downside. I think it's just something people need to be aware of how they work best and if that is a distraction for them. But definitely on the side of aiding with communication and feeling connected to your coworkers, they’re definitely…things like Slack and things like chatting on Microsoft Teams are definitely very helpful. I've been in teams that we've never met in person, but we use Slack or something similar and I, I don't know, I feel like we still built a pretty strong relationship. 

B: Yeah, definitely. I personally enjoy Slack a lot. I also hear what you're saying in terms of the distraction factor. I have been in situations where I've been communicating with people via email, Slack, text, and then some sort of other messaging app all at the same time. And it's just, it's just a lot.

Lutie: Also, I think messaging apps, tools like Slack, it's easier to access them after hours or people have a tendency to use the more after hours, so that can be a challenge when in that working-from-home model it's already difficult to set boundaries between what is work time and what is personal time. So, with what you were saying, B, with like setting norms about how to use those channels, I think also saying like, “I don't check Slack after 6 p.m. Like, you can send me a message, but just know that I'm not going to respond immediately like I would during the day.”

B: Yeah, and really using and abiding by those, like, away…you know, your status.

Lutie: Right. Yeah, setting your status. I'm a big fan.  

B: I don't do that as much as I should.  

Lutie: I do it more on Teams. I think it's easier on Teams because you have really specific ones.  

B: Yeah, so that's a good transition, because I wanted to talk about Teams a little bit because I'm a newbie to Microsoft Teams. I just started using it a couple months ago.

Lutie: Me too!

B: I had heard people kind of talk down about Teams, and so I was kind of expecting it to be terrible, quite frankly. But I actually like it. And I like it because I think it seems like it's done a pretty good job of incorporating different project management apps and tools into the team's platform that really encourage collaborative work. And I'm a big fan of having all of that in one place. I myself am still trying to figure out the best way to structure the different teams in the Microsoft Teams app. I'm sure it depends on the organization, but you can set up all these different teams and within each team can set up a number of channels, just like Slack. So, depending on how your organization is set up, you can be setting up a channel for a specific project or type of work, and within that channel, you can set up what Teams calls…so they recently combined two different apps, the To Do app and the Planner app, so that it's now one thing. And it's pretty flexible so you can almost make your own, like, Kanban board because you can put your to do lists into different buckets. And so you can kind of set it up so you can move a task across those buckets if you wanted to. And you can categorize them and it's collaborative so you can add different people to different things and tag them, comment, add subtasks. There are a lot of apps that I've been trying to look into that I'm still trying to figure out how best to use. There's one called Approvals that you can basically, like, upload a document or anything you need approval for and send it along to someone in your organization who needs to approve it, sign off on it. They have all sorts of different tools that you can add that help sort of make collaborative work more efficient and declutter the email inbox in ways that are really helpful in this remote work environment.

Lutie: I am really glad you brought that up because I didn't actually know you could do all that stuff in Teams, and I've been trying to structure my work, figuring out how to be most efficient and organized and, like you said, declutter the email inbox. But, I hadn't gotten that far yet, so thank you.

B: You're welcome. I just discovered this for myself a few weeks ago, and I was very excited. I think it's also a good place for a team building or, like, social area. Now that we don't have that shared in-person space, a lot of people might be missing out on that if they're in a completely remote or hybrid environment—sort of the casual conversation—and I think it is important to have a place where people can relate to each other on a level beyond the work that they do. This is from actually a blog post that was published by Fractured Atlas, and it talked a lot about this transition from all in-person to all remote to whatever's next for a lot of organizations, and how the fully remote environment or even if some departments are remote and some aren't, you have this sort of clash of cultures and understanding of mission and people who feel like they don't even feel like they're working for the same organization but they are because they're not with each other every day. And so, you know, whatever we can do on these digital platforms to help employees feel like they are on the same page, be it work related or not, I think is helpful. And I think it'll be fun to see how we continue to use these tools and what sort of new apps come out of them.  

Lutie: Yeah, I also think, generally, remote work caused by the pandemic showed a lot of workplaces how much better they could be doing things, regardless of modality. Like, even in person, a lot of these tools could really be helpful as far as a place for project managing.

B: I would recommend anyone whose organization is still figuring out their policies and procedures around this, I referenced earlier that Fractured Atlas put out a post with some tips about building a hybrid workplace. They were hybrid before the pandemic started, so they have been figuring out this model for a while and they published some tips on how to thrive in a hybrid team and how to thrive in creating a hybrid team. The tips are: approach it with intentionality, make expectations clear, have set in-office days, don't make it a perk for higher level staff, ask what the staff wants and needs, and accept that it's a process. And then this post, they talk about trying to consider and incorporate antiracism into your hybrid work model, which I also think is really important to acknowledge that your ability to thrive in a remote workspace or thrive in the office depends on a lot of things. And for many people who are Black or people of color have reported that they were experiencing daily microaggressions, and there's been quite a bit of reporting around the relief that a lot of people of color felt not having to go into that environment every day. So, just stuff like that is really good for the workplace to consider. 

Lutie: Yeah, that's really interesting. I hadn't heard that. 

B: So, moving on to our next topic, which goes hand in hand with the remote slash hybrid work topic. Lutie, I’m going to let you take it from here.

Lutie: If you have an iPhone, you can turn on a setting to have it track your screen time and have it notify you weekly about what you average per day. And it also breaks it down by category, what you actually spend your time doing. So, B, I happen to know that we're both working remotely right now. I wanted to ask you, what is your screen time on your phone like?

B: Um…how do I check that? 

Lutie: [Gasp] You don’t know? You have an iPhone! 

B: I do. So…  

Lutie: Go in to settings and there's, like, a screen time…

B: Oh, yeah, it's right there. 

Lutie: I get a notification every Sunday that updates me.  

B: Oh, I have to turn it on, so I can't actually like tell you. Zero minutes. 

Lutie: Oh, wow. No reveal.

B: Bummer. So, what's yours?  

Lutie: Mine has gone up high since…I don't know, it's just been increasing steadily. So far this week, I'm averaging four and a half hours a day on my phone.  

B: That doesn't seem like that much.  

Lutie: To me, it seems like a lot. In that four and a half hours for me, I looked, and I spend about an hour a day on iMessage, on like the text messaging app, another hour between social media apps. But then the rest is like, just kind of miscellaneous. I'm like, where does that time go?  

B: So, what does this mean for you? Do you think this is a healthy amount?  

Lutie: I don't think it's a healthy amount. Part of the reason I wanted to talk about this was because I've noticed my screen time on my phone steadily increasing. This is kind of anecdotal evidence because iPhones don't save historical screen time data—I can only see about three weeks back—but I remember at the height of lockdown in the United States in March/April 2020 having a conversation with my housemates about our screen time. And I remember my phone being around two and a half hours. And that was, like, significantly lower than theirs. And I even remember it staying that way. And then on weeks when my phone would notify me that I was averaging, like, over three hours a day, I just felt gross. But now, I'm way past that.

B: You're at rock bottom!

Lutie: I’m not, but the scary part is that I don't feel like I'm on my phone more now. 

B: So it's interesting to consider how as, like, device users this makes us feel and compare that with any sort of technology or company or organization that's trying to use technology to reach people, how they might feel in, like, really banking on people's willingness to enjoy anything on their screen. And that's sort of the space we're in now in the arts and culture is like, yes, a lot of things are starting to happen in person again, but there's this sort of motivation to make things available virtually as well.  

Lutie: A new report from a mobile data and analytics firm called App Annie that TechCrunch reported on found that global consumers are spending an average of 4.2 hours a day using apps on their smartphones. They did this research in the first quarter of 2021, and that 4.2 hours a day was the first time that daily time spent in apps surpassed four hours in the U.S., Turkey, Mexico, and India. In those countries, we are spending more time on apps since it was the first time that it passed four hours. And that was in 2021. That means that we're above lockdown levels also.  

B: Oh, that's interesting. 

Lutie: I was glad to see I wasn't the only one. App Annie did only measure time spent on Android devices. That's how they were getting their data. And it was also kind of hard to determine which apps were driving the increase because things like YouTube, TikTok, Facebook are always pretty high as far as downloads and usage and such, but some of the breakout apps that saw spikes on both iOS and Android in the first quarter of 2021 included secure messaging apps like Telegram and Signal, some crypto trading apps, and also Clubhouse. So, with all that time spent on apps, those are just a few of what arts organizations trying to engage with people on their screens are having to compete with. 

B: Yeah, the competition is a good point. For organizations who are trying to reach people: one, it's encouraging, because people are willing to be on their phones.

Lutie: Clearly.

B: But you also mentioned the competition. I did want to look up to see what research existed in terms of health and screen time. A 2017 study of US adults found spending six hours or more a day watching TV or using computers was associated with a higher risk for depression, and a study published in 2018 found that young people who spend seven hours or more a day interacting with screens are twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression or anxiety than those who use screens more moderately. They did note that they weren't able to prove that these effects were as a result of the screen time and that perhaps people who were experiencing these things were just more likely to be spending more time on screens. So, the causation wasn't necessarily there but the correlation was. 

Lutie: See, and when you say that, like, six hours or more, like we talked about earlier in the episode with for working from home, if you are working from home, that's like a guaranteed eight hours basically only looking at your computer.

B: Yeah.

Lutie: And then likely, if you are like the average American, you end up also spending around four hours on your phone. That could involve some work messaging, but likely, it's more social and entertainment type stuff.

B: Right.

Lutie: Another downside of screen time and using apps in your phone a lot, not necessarily looking at long term effects, is just the distraction aspect—just being tempted to check it a lot, getting notifications. That average time spent on apps is usually dispersed throughout the day, so it's not like you get your four hours out of the way at some point and then you’re phone-free. You're going back to continuously check it and it gets you derailed from whatever you're focused on. So, with working from home that can be an issue and really working anywhere that can be an issue if you still have access to your smartphone. 

B: Yeah, that one hits pretty close to home, I have to say.  

Lutie: B, this is an intervention. [Laughter] I did find a few solutions.  

B: Oh, bring it on.  

Lutie: So, iPhones at least allow you to set app limits on your phone. You could do it per app or per category, so I have a limit set for my social media apps, collectively, where after an hour and a half, they won't let me get on anymore. You can bypass it, but it will alert you that you've reached your limit for the day. And I'm pretty sure if you have an Apple laptop, you can do that as well. Another solution, I have an app called Forest. It's kind of a gamified version of setting app limits. So, you plant a little virtual tree for a certain amount of time, so you could do like 30 minutes, an hour, and it'll block you from looking at other things on your laptop or phone. If you make it the full time without doing that, then the tree grows and you can grow a little forest. 

B: That's actually really great. Some people might think that sounds silly, but that would 100% motivate me.

Lutie: Right. And if you do break it and go off to look at a different app, the tree dies and it tells you and you have a dead tree in your forest.  

B: Alright, I am definitely going to download this.  

Lutie: Another solution is just tracking your screen time. I actually started an Excel sheet yesterday. It's just a way to see the trends and notify yourself if you're reaching an unhealthy amount. Some solutions if you are working from home or if you're employing people who are working from home, you can also try to take some measures to, not limit the time that people are on their screens, but kind of intervene. For employees, maybe set some time is when you won't schedule video call meetings and you could maybe get some work done off screen. Or for managers, I've heard of a couple places doing like meeting-less Mondays where you have a time just to work on your own stuff on that day. Because, we've talked about this on the podcast before, but Zoom fatigue is a different kind of screen time pain. So limiting that can be helpful. 

B: Yeah, for sure. 

Lutie: So thinking about the time that people are spending on apps, spending on their phones, can be helpful for arts organizations thinking about how they're marketing their events so they can know what patrons are doing on their phones and how they could possibly reach them. And also for programming now that we're going a little bit more in person, thinking that some people may want to escape looking at their screen. Also, some arts organizations are working on developing apps for at-home engagement, and if they are doing that, just being aware that there is a lot of competition for that time, but people do still seem to be interested in engaging in that method. And also related to the in-person experiences, some performing arts organizations have also played around with app-based program notes and app-based ticketing for some more touchless options, and since people are spending so much time on their phones, it is a form that they're comfortable with, but on the flip side, could also be easily distracted by other things. So, lots to consider. 

B: So I think this is a good transition into our next topic. Our Podcast Producer Angela Johnson and I are speaking with Andrew Wolverton, who is an AMT Lab contributor, about a live streaming software, Streamlabs OBS. 

Angela: Alright, so we have a special guest to talk to us about Streamlabs. So, Andrew, do you want to introduce yourself? 

Andrew: Yeah. So, hello, everybody. My name is Andrew Wolverton. I was a high school theater teacher and director for the past five years, and when the pandemic hit, I had to start finding new means of connecting with my students online and giving them content that worked a little bit better on the online platform. And so I started kind of getting into different ways to, like, use my mic and microphone use for better Zoom classes. And then I had a local theater that was wanting to do some sort of virtual performance. And so I looked into live streaming platforms, which led me to Streamlabs OBS, and, you know, online broadcasting softwares, and I started really getting into the software and setting kind of different live streams up and I've done it for a couple of organizations in the past year and it's become a little hobby of mine. 

B: You just introduced Streamlabs briefly. Would you be able to speak a little bit more about what it is and what OBS are in general? 

Andrew: Yeah, so if anybody's familiar with livestream platform and gaming, such as like Twitch or Facebook Gaming or even YouTube Live events and YouTube Gaming, all those folks that are livestreaming on those platforms. They are using some form of online broadcasting software. And it's essentially taking a TV studio and putting it onto your computer, allowing for you to be the producer and editor and host all at the same time. This platform offers a lot of great customization for anybody who uses it. It's fairly easy to use once you get into it and understand the basics. But yeah, you're able to kind of filter your computer, all the computer sound through it. You can filter game sounds that you might be using through it. You can filter live feeds from other microphones. If you have a sound mixer or a soundboard that's compatible with a computer, you can push that through this software. You can push any sort of video stream that you have going through from a webcam to your own personal video camera webcam, push it all through this software, and it automatically can upload it onto, you know, whatever platform you're using. And there are a few different OBS systems that you can use. So there's the standard OBS. I would say that's probably for people who code their own sort of plugins and really understand how to sort of develop that themselves. And then there are a couple other more customizable user-friendly versions, such as Streamlabs, there's Stream Ninja, there’s StreamElements, and then there is StreamYard, which is sort of an online only version of an OBS. All these other OBS softwares you download onto your computer and you set it up yourself. And like I said, there's a lot of customization options. And the coolest part about is that there is a free base platform for everybody use. To be honest, it works really well, you know, just in the free version. So, there's a lot of access, I think, for anybody to be able to pick it up and use it. There is a paid feature in which there are some more additional features available to you in customization. However, it's not needed. So I really appreciate that about this software is that, you know, anybody can pick it up and we kind of see that variance of ages, even online. You know, if you go on to Twitch, for example, you will see people who are, you know, in their…I've seen people middle-aged on there running streams, and you'll also find nine year olds, as well. There's a lot of easy access for anybody out there to pick this up. And mobile, I forgot to mention. Yeah, you can do this on your phone. You can download Streamlabs onto your phone and live stream from there. It's very easy. 

Angela: I am wondering—you were talking about a lot of other platforms that do kind of similar things. And is there any reason why Streamlabs specifically is either better, or how it differentiates itself?

Andrew: So what I like about Streamlabs is, one, it has a multi-platform functionality. So I could livestream—through their premium version, at least—you can multi-stream on to Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch all at the same time, which really can help with growth and getting whatever you're live streaming, put it out there on multiple platforms. And so that I really enjoy. Streamlabs also has a very robust library of graphics, of overlays, of alerts, chat border boxes, and alert boxes that do all sorts of different animations for you. And so there's a lot of customization that Streamlabs offers. They have different, like, in-house apps, if you will, or extensions that you can add into Streamlabs and edit, you know, minor different overlays, or like I talked about chat boxes, you can edit those yourselves if you don't want to use their pre-selected ones. That's the biggest thing that separates Streamlabs from these other softwares is that it has the multi-stream possibility. And with premium, you can send out signal to quite a few different platforms, even to smaller websites than YouTube or Facebook or Twitch. You can just put in what they call a stream key, which is essentially like your own personalized code, if you will, that connects your OBS to that platform. And so it works really well for me, and you can essentially just log into your YouTube, Facebook, or Twitch account in OBS. It'll connect it directly, you know, to the site, and then it'll do all kinds of that heavy lifting and setting up what you want your settings to be for the stream, which that is definitely something that I was not able to do on my own. I had to go on and see what are the perfect settings based upon, you know, my computer processing power, based upon my internet speed. It does offer a lot of different options for you based upon whatever system you have. 

B: So, so far, we've kind of been talking about Streamlabs being used as a gamer who’s live streaming that themselves. But I think we should definitely talk about how this can be used in the arts, especially when it comes to digital experience and audience engagement. So, what are your thoughts on that? 

Andrew: I ran an online event for one of the local community theaters last year, and essentially what we did was a cabaret-style type of show. It was pseudo live. So what we did is I had a couple of local artists varying from either singing, or painting, dancing, monologues, and I had them send in pre-recorded videos to me, and I would edit those and I would, you know, put that into the stream. But I also went live myself to where I was able to interact with anybody that was, you know, joining us on Facebook or on YouTube. One of the biggest features with live streaming is interacting with your chat. Chat is sort of the heart and soul of the stream. It really doesn't matter kind of what you're putting out there. You need to have some sort of interaction with your audience. You know, I come from a theatre background, so I think in the way of theater where there's that fourth wall. But with live streaming, you need to break that fourth wall. I would argue that it needs to be broken. You can't take content that we're used to in person and just put it online. That was part of my goal. And so having different questions, you can create polls for people to interact with in the chat. There are chat commands that pull up different options for them. I created this command and also a chat bot in which every 10 minutes or so it would send out a donation link and say, “Hey, if you like what you're seeing, you know, be sure to support this.” You can put your audience what they're saying on the actual screen and put their comments on there and making your chat feel as if they are a part of that livestream. 

B: And, it seems that if you're using the technology to push out those donation requests, it can be lucrative. If we're talking about the struggle that is trying to make revenue through online content, something like Streamlabs that has built in features that can help you do that. 

Andrew: Yeah. It depends, too, what platform you're on. I will say that if you use Twitch, you know, that has a little bit easier donation button functions. So, with streaming platforms, the key to getting like donation buttons that people see is that you have to have a certain number of followers, a certain number of hours that you streamed. So starting off, you're not going to automatically get those donate buttons,. You're going to have to program either a chat bot, which you can do through Streamlabs. They have access to that, and you just say every 10 minutes, just put this link in. And then that's the other thing, too, when it comes to donations, is that a lot of times people do small donations on streams, you know, and it's taking that sort of pressure off of people and just saying, “Hey, you know, you like what you see, throwing a little tip here.” And, you know, and your message will get put up on the screen, and everyone can see it, which is really, really kind of cool that people can do. You can connect PayPal accounts to your Streamlabs, so once you do get able to get a donate button, it'll automatically just sync up with OBS and go straight into your PayPal account, which, I know, when you're dealing with money, there is a lot of security issues that people worry about and where the money goes. PayPal seems to be something that I think people feel a bit more secure about. 

Angela: I like the idea of donation during livestream events that are then paying in advance. 

Andrew: Yeah, and that kind of like brings a really cool idea to how—again to bring it back to theater—is there a way for us to give people the ability to give tips in the middle of a show? People do have that sense of you know, like, “I'm enjoying what I'm seeing. Yeah, I'll throw in a couple bucks.” A few years ago, so a producer named Ken Davenport, he had what he called Tweet Seats. So if you had a Tweet Seat, during a live Broadway show, you were allowed to be on Twitter for that show and live tweet your thoughts, your ideas. You couldn’t take photos, obviously, but you could live tweet during the show. And so I think that live streaming has definitely shown that it can be successful for people to enjoy content and also comment, live tweet what they're wanting to do. And so I think an area to explore for organizations are these live tips, live donations.

Angela: Especially now, but even after the pandemic, the organizations that are going to do best are the ones that are accepting technology and technological innovation and, like, adapting to it instead of being like, “Here's the thing, but online.” Like, you’ve got to say, “This is a different medium, so we're gonna have to interact differently and do things differently.” And that's okay, it's only going to get better. 

B: I think it is exciting to see and I hope that we continue to see organizations really just kind of being playful and trying new things out with things like live streaming and not being intimidated by it. Andrew, it's nice to hear you talk about how Streamlabs is fairly easy to use. And maybe that's subjective, but they make it accessible, and I think you just kind of have to be willing to play around with it for a while until you can figure out a way that works for you and your organization. 

Andrew: Yeah, most definitely. You know, I got into OBS with zero knowledge of how it worked. And I did pretty much what anybody is going to do nowadays and just go on YouTube and watch a video and there are so many videos out there where people are doing step-by-step guides for you. There are some well-developed tutorials out there for anybody just getting started. You definitely need to do your research. It does not take that long. I am nowhere near an expert when it comes to any of that setup. If someone were to ask me, “How do I set it up?” I'm going to go to a YouTube video or I'm going to look at my own settings and just be like, “Yeah, this is what you need to do.” That's just the honest truth. And that's kind of what I love about all these online platforms is that it just opens access for anybody to be able to do this on their own. And the communities that are out there are more than willing to help out—the Discord group, the community group. I put in a question and there's somebody out there, some random person who does not work for Streamlabs is going to help you. Any organization that might be new to technology, they'll be okay with it. And with audiences attending, I've heard the argument, “Well, our patrons are not part of the digital age.” And I saw one of the streams I did, I did a poll after the event and asked for feedback, and I found out that 54% of our viewers, their college years they would consider between the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. That was 54% of our viewers. They were chatting. Afterward, 81% of the people said they were very likely to attend another livestream event, and 16% said they were likely to, and I think there was only 2%. that said, they're like, “Nope, that's not for me.” So kind of looking at, again, very preliminary, small sample size of data, you know, but if people from the 50s who were in college are able to get online and watch this, I don't think there's an excuse out there as to why you cannot do that.

B: For sure. I feel like we should share what the cost of Streamlabs is.

Andrew: Yeah, like I said, Streamlabs cost-wise, there's a free base version, which you can use. You can still customize everything you want for your stream and get everything out of it. And you can only stream to one platform, which for most people, I think that's fine. You know, most people are going to use either YouTube or Facebook, which I would recommend Facebook, I think, starting off, just because the sharing algorithms and the way it works, you can connect to a little bit more people. And it's easier for folks to find it on Facebook. And then they do have a premium, or I should say a Prime version. They call it Prime for Streamlabs, which is $149 a year. But you can split that up to, like, $19 a month. You know, $19 a month isn't out of the question, especially if you're planning on actually using it to create some sort of earned revenue from these events. Because you can also set up tickets for Streamlabs through Prime, which gives you another earned income.

B: Awesome.

Angela: Yeah. Well, thank you for joining us. 

B: Yeah. Very good advice. A wealth of knowledge here.  

Andrew: Hey, I'm happy to be here with you all.  

Lutie: Thanks for listening to the AMT Lab podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and to leave a comment. If you would like to learn more, go to amt-lab.org. That is A-M-T dash L-A-B .org. Or, you can email us at amtlabcmu@gmail.com. You can also follow us on Twitter or Instagram at Tech in the Arts, or on Facebook and LinkedIn at Arts Management and Technology Lab. You can find the resources that we referenced today in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.  

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