Backstar And The Dalai Lama
May 17, 2012 by Andrew Schneider
Mitch Norinsky and his team at Backstar Creative Media recently wrapped up their digital streaming assignment for the 12th annual summit of Nobel Laureates at The UIC Forum and CSO for the Chicago Community Trust.
Norinsky watched his digital display while working and observed Former President Jimmy Carter, Former Soviet President Mikael Gorbachev, Former Polish President Lech Walesa and, of course, The Dalai Lama.
“Our role was to be able to provide a Flash Media stream for Scholastic and its partners’ web properties,” Norinsky said.
There was a live feed to deliver to an Italian university, Universita Telematica Internazionale Unninttuno and of course, the U.S. State Department.
“I had no concept initially that there would be so many people involved,” Norinsky said. “We were tasked with connecting all the different entities and technologies to make it viable for all the interested parties. Not least of which was the office of his holiness, the Dalai Lama.”
He wasn’t trying to meet any of the Nobel laureates, but he enjoyed the event all the same.
“Being within forty-five feet of the Dalai Lama, I’d like to think some grace rubbed off on me,” he says. “Gorbachev did nearly brush up against me in the hallway. But most of the time, we’re basically glued to our computers, verifying analytics and everything else during the event to make sure it stays up and connected.”
For his part of the event, Norinsky produced it live with one person, an editor wrangling media during the event to add titles, mixes and upload within a day and re-export out for direct-to-web posting and video-on-demand systems. There were six translations going on throughout the event and native speakers could listen in their own language.
The technical challenges are what Norinsky was expecting, but not being in the midst of Nobel winners.
“This type of event was totally unexpected, the types of people that were involved and the nature of those that are connected to it,” Norinsky said. “Our typical events are more corporate related. My business has been focused on harvesting the technologies that would enable us to stream to as many people as efficiently as possible.”
Since Backstar’s first live stream in 2002, Mitchell has been working with corporate, educational and non-profit entities to produce events on site and set up turn-key solutions for webcasting to all screens including computer and mobile.
Looking ahead, Norinsky is exploring adding a device that will bond 4G hotspots together to build a big enough pipe to stream in locations where there is no internet, like the golf course or North Avenue Beach.
“And we’ll continue to accommodate as many devices as become available and to find new ways to integrate social media to live webcasts,” he says.
In the last year, Norinsky has been joined in his office by his father, Ron Norinsky and his company Video Replay.
“There’s some symbiosis between us,” Mitch says. “If one of his clients have a need that relates to content that’s digital that might be encoding or editing or delivering, we work together.”
That affiliation has worked out well for both Norinsky’s and has allowed Ron to continue to work in his field in his own pace after his move about a year ago to spin off his rental business to a former employee and work part time.
“If I can maintain the things exactly the way they were I would be very pleased,” Ron says, noting that he loves working with old clients like the Latino Cultural Center, the Museum of Broadcast Communications and Columbia College, along with the state of Illinois.
“We were never really in business together, he’s always had his own company, we often share accounts, the services he’s offering are complimentary to the services I provide.”