Just because something is free or opti-in does not allow anyone to get all elitist. This is MY web too and I can wander around it and comment on whatever I want to comment on. If you don’t like that, go private and start your own mutual marveling society.

1. UStream and other IPTV services, akin to Podcasting, are completely opt in. They do not represent another entrant into the zero sum game of broadcast media, or another confusing addition to the (deliberately) poorly indexed and difficult to navigate ranks of satellite or cable programming. As such, it’s irrelevant whether they interest the public at large. Livestreaming is narrowcasting in this regard. It should not be something that with an potential mass audience – for a start the infrastructure isn’t designed to support one. As long as the live broadcast is valuable to the participants and the audience who do watch it, it was worth doing. Considering yesterdays Dublin Open Coffee garnered about 20 real time viewers with no prior planning or announcement, and the positive experience of the participants, it seems to have been a success.

2. Despite the informal nature of open coffee mornings, there is an intimidation factor built into an event like this. For those new to the entrepreneurial scene, the prospect of meeting people running their own businesses, or even more so investing in businesses, can be intimidating. Being able to see how the morning actually goes down, actively reduces the fear factor, puts faces to names, and makes participation more likely. Now it could be argued that appearing on camera makes participants skittish, and that’s a valid point, but as its a public forum anyway, participants already need to be careful about what information they give out; and such worries can be handled by breaking the morning into a non-filmed and optional filmed sections, as others have suggested.

3. It’s not the first of it’s kind, but the use of publically accessible live streaming at an event like this remains innovative, and hence good publicity.

4. This one should be obvious, but I don’t think anyone has pointed it out yet. Standing in the way of this stuff is whistling in the wind. Unless a given event makes a conscious choice to go ‘media dark’, which certainly happens and has it’s uses, all of this stuff will become increasingly transparent, more and more frequently captured and livestreamed etc; as we all become our own sources of media. This stuff is as inevitable as the march of technology. Humans are addicted to real time social interaction, and anything which facilitates that is likely to be heavily adopted in time.

Second point. Those who attend Limerick OpenCoffee normally pay for one out of every three mugs of coffee they drink. Knowing that, some people visit even though there are cameras lurking on tables. On our occasional ring-arounds, we haven’t heard anyone saying the event itself is a waste of time. On the contrary, there’s a very strong community spirit that seems to motivate the entrepreneurs who show up and some of them actually come back to the venue on Thursdays when nothing is happening.

Any ideas on if there are plans for and edited highlights?