On Friday, April 29, billions tuned in live to catch the nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton, and of those “guests,” many did so online. According to the Hollywood Reporter, the wedding beat out the viewing of Michael Jackson’s funeral, the previous record-holder, by an enormous 21 percent.
Because the big event took place during normal business hours in Europe, as well as many parts of North American and Asia, many workers were driven to stream the ceremony online, on either the Royal Wedding YouTube channel or from one of the many news websites covering the ceremony. Companies who did not take proper precautions before the wedding may have seen a decrease in network performance. But now that the Wedding of the Century is under our belts, check out these lessons learned from the most streamed event in history.
- Get together – many organizations hosted “Royal Wedding” themed parties, where employees gathered in shared spaces to view the event together. This tactic reduces strain on the network and would allow for the work of those uninterested to be unaffected by slow response times. Plus, acknowledging that there were employees who did want to check out the ceremony by offering office-wide activities, like breakfast or hosting a Royal Hat Day, encouraged productivity after the couple said “I Do.”
- Preparation is Key, even for BBC— If IT managers didn’t read our previous post on prepping for the big event, we suggested that IT staff remind employees of social media and usage policies to avoid network downtime or crashes. But even large organizations can run into major problems when they don’t properly prepare. We learned that during the event, the UK BBC website crashed, and the video feed that showed the wedding was replaced with an error message.
- Be transparent – Ensuring your IT staff knows about significant events in advance is key to ensuring your network performance is maintained. While many folks were aware of the wedding, sending a quick reminder to your team could have prevented network issues.
- Set expectations- Research agency Social Strategy 1 reported that YouTube saw around 1.3 million live viewers on the Royal Channel, but the video sharing website saw slow load times and at one point had only 74 percent availability during the ceremony. Sending employees a quick note about the possibility that networks may be slow may decrease disappointment for those unable to view the event correctly.
With proper visibility and control, organizations can still maintain productivity while interesting events are happening around us in real-time, whether they are athletic, political or culturally significant. Hopefully these lessons learned will help prepare for future events that garner a large streaming crowd – Prince Harry is up next!
