Taffy

With the busy season in full swing, I wanted to give a quick update on some of the latest happenings around the Stretch offices. Hopefully everyone has a great Thanksgiving holiday and gets a brief reprieve from the madness. If you’re reading this after Thursday, grab yourself a turkey sandwich (second only to watching football all day in sweatpants as the best thing about Thanksgiving) and we’ll catch you up on the latest from Stretch HQ.

Mobile live stats and live blog features up and running:
In case you weren’t aware, both of these features are now fully functional. Here are a couple shots of each in action:

Cardinal Stritch Live Blog

Football mobile stats

Volleyball Mobile Stats

Cumberlands Live Blog

So far the feedback has been good – please keep your suggestions and comments coming.

Pilot HD Streaming:
We’ve begun piloting HD streaming with a handful of clients, as we anticipate moving to more widely available HD platform in the future (stay tuned for future posts on our full-scale transition). We’ve worked with some clients that have HD video sources and plenty of bandwidth, and the results so far have been fantastic. If you haven’t seen it yet, take a look at some Northeastern hockey in HD

There are a handful of other clients who have done some higher bit rate streaming (900-1000 Kbps) successfully, including Yale, Furman and Washington University-St. Louis. If you get a chance, be sure to check out their video as well.

If you’re interested in testing and exploring either HD streaming – or just increasing your bit rate – let us know and we’ll be glad to talk over the options with you.

Stretch had a great time in Chicago at the Symposium for Higher Education

Ryan and I made the trek to Chicago in early November for the AMA event and had a great time speaking with folks (some current clients, some prospective clients) about the benefits of our CampusCentral platform. Prior to the event we had a chance to walk down to Wrigley Field and see some great stuff in a historic and storied city. We even stumbled upon Stretch Bar and Grill and naturally, we decided we had to have lunch there. We put up a few pictures from our trip over on our Facebook page.

We have seen a huge increase in the variety of ways clients are utilizing our streaming platform, and we are excited to see where else the imagination can take things. For those who might be “just” athletics clients and aren’t aware, our CampusCentral platform allows clients to stream a wide variety of events from commencement ceremonies to recitals to presidential addresses. Here’s a glance at a few of our clients who utilize the CampusCentral option:

Olivet Nazarene
Nebraska Wesleyan University
Franklin & Marshall College

Ryan has also authored an article on streaming music performances, which will be published next month in the Journal of Performing Arts Leadership in Higher Education. The article is titled, “Streaming Musical Performances at Institutions of Higher Education: A Practical Look at the Benefits, Requirements and Implementation.” We’ll be sure to tweet a link when it’s available on-line – it’s sure to be a great primer for schools looking to break into this area.

Well that’s a quick rundown on some of the things going on around here. We are in full-on-busy-season-mode around here. That’s why this week brings a much welcomed chance to catch our breath and reflect on the things that we are thankful for. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving break and eats way too much. If you have to be in a fancy setting (read=no sweat pants)… well,  a) I feel sorry for you and, b) make sure to loosen that belt a notch. As someone, somewhere once said eat, drink and be merry!