The first full year of streaming city council meetings online shows at least one thing: people have been watching.
Council voted in 2011 to start streaming their meetings live online. The videos are also viewable after the meeting.
“In 2011 council made a motion to implement web streaming because they wanted to increase their engagement,” said Maya Pungur-Buick, general manager for corporate strategic services.
Now the first full year of statistics are in, and while there’s nothing to compare them to yet, it’s clear at least a few people are watching.
The statistics show in 2012, there were 3,011 unique connections to the live streaming. Pungur-Buick said they’re able to track different IP addresses but if multiple computers view the webcast using the same IP address, they are counted as one connection.
Those 3,011 different live connections watched 1,497 hours of council footage. Video on demand is usually available within a couple of days of the meeting, Pungur-Buick said, and in 2012 1,888 connections accessed the video, watching about 546 hours.
The standing committee on finance videos are also posted, with about 344 connections accessing them to watch 61 hours of proceedings.
Those accessing the meeting videos after the meeting is done are able to jump to particular parts of the agenda of particular interest to them rather than having to watch the entire meeting.
However, the live streaming online broadcast offers a way for people who can’t make it to the meeting in person to tune in.
“This way it’s live,” Pungur-Buick said.
Statistics for the first two quarters of 2013 were made available as well, and it showed 791 unique connections to the live webcast during the first three months of the year and 1,272 tuning in during the second quarter. Video on demand connections come in at 1,370 over the first half of the year.
Mayor Nolan Crouse said there’s no frame of reference for the 2012 statistics.
“It’s hard to know whether or not it’s good or bad or anything, what it is is year one,” he said.
Council’s attempt to communicate more, via the webcasts or other methods like having city departments engage via social media, have had an impact, he said.
“We don’t’ hear as much today what we heard in my first six years on council. The last three years we don’t hear ‘Gee, I don’t know what’s going on,’” he said. “For me, the numbers of the first year are kind of irrelevant. The fact that you can access (the videos) is important.”
