College Sailing Nationals Live Broadcast

From a production standpoint, the biggest challenges included no access to onsite internet, which we addressed by bringing our own bonded cellular network solution; the lack of wind on some days, forcing us to constantly change our broadcast schedule, and the usual challenges of communicating over large distances, connecting our broadcast booth to the broadcast center, over 1000 feet away, and working with a camera boat on the water, at times half a mile away.

But the biggest challenge faced was that this was our first time working as a government contractor, as the academy falls under the US Department of Transportation. Before work could begin, we needed to be approved as an official vendor on SAM.gov. We had to learn on the job how invoicing works, and how to navigate the bureaucracy behind goverment contracting. With one job behind us, onboarding for the next government job will be much smoother.

The client prepared us well for all challenges and worked together with us to tackle them as they came. Through several pre-production meetings and an onsite scouting visit, we identified all the production challenges and used our resources to devise solutions. For registration and billing challenges, we worked with various levels of administration at the academy to provide the expected work on time and to scope.

Live streaming of this event has been taking place at some level since 2009, but no host has ever provided anything close to the quality of production we delivered for them. The professionalism of our show reflected incredibly well on the host school in the sailing community and was noticed by the "top brass" on campus.