A facebook live video of my Christmas lights, are you nuts?! - Good/bad idea? What questions to ask?

ryanschristmaslights

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If you were at this year's Adelaide Mini, you may recall a spot where we watched snippets of each other's shows and then had a chance to ask the decorator questions about their display. I thought this was rather interesting. I've been thinking whether something like this could work during the lighting season as a series of live videos via the AusChristmasLighting Facebook page (and would it be worth the effort). Whether this turns into anything more than an idea, I can't say. Nevertheless, I thought I'd put this out there for comment :).

From a display owner perspective... what do you think of potentially answering a few questions outside your show with rudimentary phone vision of your lights streamed through Facebook? AusChristmasLighting's FB page is only at 268 likes right now. but with any form of publicity there is the potential it could increase the road traffic you get.

From a spectator point of view... would being able to see a short video feed of another member's lights and possibly hear them briefly speak about their show and/or answer some questions be interesting to you? And what sorts of questions would you ask a fellow Christmas lighting enthusiast? I'm talking questions that could be answered by multiple decorators. E.g.:
  • How many years have you done lights?
  • Why do you do it?
  • Can you describe your display?
  • What is your show's most unique/interesting feature/element?
  • ... etc etc ...
If this idea did take off, perhaps each stream would only be a few minutes long... just enough time to see a glimpse of the display (and possibly have the display owner speak or answer a few questions).

As for what displays might be included? Probably only a small handful, limited to the Salisbury LGA, north of Adelaide CBD SA and Western Sydney area, south of Penrith NSW. This is a small part of Australia, so perhaps display owners may even like to do their own Facebook live video showing their Christmas lights and then share that with our AusChristmasLighting Facebook page (don't forget to say in your video who you are on AusChristmasLighting! ;)).
 

BradsXmasLights

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Dec 23, 2010
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Brisbane, Australia
If it's not busy then I could do a facebook live handheld. But after 10mins I get sick of holding the phone up :p

I had thought about this before, but more for watching the display. A suitable camera position (that can't be easily tampered with) & the correct the audio mix (music) input were factors that weren't so easy.
 

Derf

am now a 5v hypocrite
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Narellan Vale, NSW
For the people live streaming are you going to assign them to the page to be able to do so? I thought this was a facebook Group dealio.

I don't mind streaming and jumping on and off the roof / going around to all the houses I am doing to show how i've done it.
 

ryanschristmaslights

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Messages
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Location
Adelaide, Australia
Great idea and I would love to watch. But for those of us not on the book of faces, would they be public to see?

Yes, coming from a Facebook page it should be public. If this were from a group instead of a page then it wouldn't be viewable (which is rather annoying ... groups are usually private to limit spam but this affects reading/viewing content too.) I did a short "live" video (or that's what Facebook thought - it was recorded) on my own display's page last year and this is viewable when logged out:

View: https://www.facebook.com/RyansChristmasLights/videos/1628726910519350/


For the people live streaming are you going to assign them to the page to be able to do so?

Just a couple of people can do this at least for the time being. For other FB'ers, I think going live on your own FB display's page and afterwards sharing that with AusChristmasLighting would work. Initially these posts would be buried under the community/visitor posts area but then I believe I could re-share it and then it'll show up in the Home tab. This approach would also give your display's page another link. :)

And then later on the videos could be embedded back over here in a forum post perhaps (like I've done with my 'fake' ;) live video above.)
 
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