Last year, we were thrilled to report that video viewership had reached 750,000 views over five years of Tech Field Day. This year we’re proud to report that we’ve more than doubled that number: In 2015 alone, Tech Field Day videos on YouTube and Vimeo were viewed more than 839,000 times! This brings total viewership to just under 1.6 million views in six years. And our live stream viewership is extremely strong as well, with over 10,000 different people tuning in live in the last six months of 2015.
839,000 YouTube and Vimeo Views
When we started Tech Field Day, we thought the video recordings would mostly be a historical curiosity. But once we began posting them to YouTube in 2012, viewership really took off. Today, Tech Field Day sponsors are as excited about reaching our 5,000 YouTube channel subscribers as they are to talk tech with our delegate panel.
Overall, Tech Field Day has almost 1,400 videos online. Although we have a few videos with truly amazing viewership (Cisco and Dell both have videos with more than 20,000 views), our average viewership is very impressive at over 1,100 views per video on average.
We have always wanted to keep the Tech Field Day videos open and free to view, so we have resisted any kind of registration or tracking. But our presenters often wonder just who out there is watching all these videos. With that in mind, we ran the demographic reports from YouTube and were unsurprised: The vast majority of our viewers are men between 30 and 50 years of age, predominately in the United States but also in English-speaking countries like India, the UK, Canada, and Australia.
10,000 Livestream Viewers
In addition to posting our recorded video, Tech Field Day added live streaming video in 2013. Since we didn’t have a registration page, we didn’t have much visibility into these viewers until Livestream updated their system (and our account) at the middle of last year. Now that we have more data, we can share some interesting statistics in that area as well.
Overall, the six events we live streamed since July attracted 10,035 unique viewers, as measured by Livestream. The average viewer watched for about 30 minutes, but many stayed much longer than that. There were a solid 100+ viewers watching at any given time, with the core audience interacting on Twitter and commenting that they felt like they were there in the room with us.
Once again, our strongest country for live streaming video was the United States. Our English-speaking event certainly plays a part in that, but time zones are a major factor as well: It’s very difficult to tune in to an event that runs from 8 AM to 6 PM Pacific time when that’s the middle of the night where you live! Yet we still had non-trivial viewership from India, Australia, and Japan, with some of these folks saying they rearranged their schedules just to watch the event live.
Thank You For Watching!
In summary, video engagement with Tech Field Day has been off the charts, dramatically exceeding our expectations. If you’re one of the 10,000 people who watched live or the thousands who subscribe to the Tech Field Day YouTube channel, we would like to thank you. Our event is dedicated to sharing knowledge and expanding the community, and that’s exactly what’s happening! We have many more events planned for 2016, and we hope to see you there!