Streaming four separate events. Over three days. For 12 hours a day. Sounds straightforward, right?
Well…
At the London Screenwriters Festival, we’re streaming four rooms simultaneously, Tuke Hall, Herringham Hall, Script Chat 1 and Script Chat 2. Each one going to a separate destination. All running in parallel. All needing to work. All the time.
The Illusion of “Just Press Go”
From the outside, live streaming can look deceptively simple. Open the platform. Hit “Go Live.” Done.
But when you’re managing multiple rooms, multiple feeds, and multiple outputs, and doing it in a way that’s cost-effective and scalable, the technical complexity ramps up fast. We’re using StreamYard to manage the streams, and even with a robust platform, the logistics are mind-boggling.
Bandwidth. Hardware. Monitoring. Fail-safes. Human error. Redundancy. Now multiply all of that by four rooms.
Test Days Matter More Than Event Days
Today is the first full main test. Max has set up four separate monitoring computers, one for each stream. And we are running a live test from my machine to see whether we can push signal cleanly to all four systems simultaneously.
This is the unglamorous part of production that most people never see. No audience. No applause. Just cables, dashboards, and quiet concentration.
This is also where success is decided. If you don’t stress-test the system before the event, the event becomes the test, and that’s not a place you want to be.
The Bigger Lesson
Large-scale streaming isn’t just about technology. It’s about systems thinking.
How do you build something reliable? How do you make it affordable? How do you monitor it without overwhelming your team? How do you create redundancy without doubling your budget?
Events today aren’t just in-person experiences. They’re hybrid productions. Broadcast experiences. Digital assets. And that means the production mindset has to evolve.
Because when it works, it feels effortless.
When it doesn’t… everyone notices.
