Notes from the truck
What we learned on actual jobs. Written by the people who were there, which is why there are numbers in it and why some of it is about things going wrong.
This series is written by Anthony Reda and Val Ries, who run live production for AVP.Live: corporate broadcasts, memorial livestreams, and sports pay-per-view events across New Jersey, New York City, and Philadelphia. Nothing on this page is borrowed from somebody else’s post. Every entry starts from a real job or a documented procedure we actually run, and where a paragraph calls for a detail we have not yet been given permission to publish, it stays out rather than getting invented.
The subjects repeat because the failures repeat: venue internet that is not what it was promised to be, audio nobody budgeted for, redundancy that gets cut from the budget first and matters most on the day, and the ticketing and paywall problems that only surface once you are running a paid event yourself. If you are planning a livestream, a hybrid meeting, or a paid broadcast and want a second opinion before you book it, the contact page is the fastest way in. If you would rather read first, start with whichever title below matches what is keeping you up tonight.
Production · · 7 min
Exhibitor Internet: What to Offer and How to Run It
How organizers should offer exhibitor internet: wired drops or dedicated WiFi, card readers kept off guest WiFi, and what goes in the exhibitor kit.
By Val Ries
Corporate · · 7 min
Hotel AV Fees Explained: Patch, Vendor and Internet
What a hotel AV patch fee, outside vendor fee, service charge, power and internet line pay for, and what to ask about each one before you sign.
By Anthony Reda
Government · · 7 min
How to Livestream a Council Meeting So It Holds
Fixed cameras or a crew each month, the failover plan, the recording hand-off schedule, captions, and what the clerk actually does the night of a meeting.
By Val Ries
Government · · 7 min
Does NJ Law Require Public Meetings to Be Streamed?
New Jersey's Open Public Meetings Act keeps meetings open to the public. It does not require livestreaming or recording. Here is what the law says and does not.
By Anthony Reda
Government · · 7 min
Where Should Your Public Meeting Livestream Live?
YouTube, the township website, or a private platform for a meeting stream: cost drivers, retention, public comment handling, captions, and file ownership.
By Anthony Reda
Government · · 8 min
A Municipal RFP Checklist for Meeting Livestreaming
What a municipality should specify when bidding out meeting livestreaming: cameras, audio, failover, recording delivery, retention, insurance, response time.
By Anthony Reda
Production · · 6 min
The venue said they had fibre. That tells you nothing.
Why a venue speed test does not predict whether your livestream holds, the four questions that actually separate venues, and what to do when the answer is bad.
By Val Ries
Corporate · · 7 min
What a corporate livestream costs and returns
A straight breakdown of what drives the price of a corporate event livestream, what the cheap version costs you later, and how to work out whether it pays.
By Anthony Reda
Corporate · · 9 min
The six things that break a corporate livestream
Bandwidth, audio, the venue's promises, remote presenters, redundancy, and the run of show. What actually goes wrong on event day and how to plan around it.
By Anthony Reda
Platform · · 6 min
Why we built our own ticketing instead of renting one
Running a paid livestream through three vendors costs more than the production. The math behind building our own platform, and when renting is still right.
By Anthony Reda