UCF Blackstone Launchpad - Social Media for Small Businesses and How to use Blab

Alright, so we're recording. So for some reason, see how my little "tell your friends" is hanging over the recording button? And I could refresh the page, but if I refresh the page and I'm alone— well, actually fixed it, now you can rejoin. But when we first started, the old days of Blab, 6 months ago, when we hit refresh, we would lose the page and we'd have to start all over again. So let's tell my followers that I'm live and on air. So they are notified. And now, first thing we're gonna do to tell you about Blab is we're gonna say, first we're gonna say hi to Nazim and Betty. How you guys doing?

Great, we're doing great. Very well, it's cold in Italy. We're live from Milan.

So it's cold in Milan today.

Yes.

It's not cold in Florida, I hate to tell you.

I can see it.

Noticing by the shirt, I think we can tell it.

Yeah, I know. Well, you know me, it could be 60 out and I'd still be crazy wearing this. So, you know, it could be cold.

Are you in a classroom setting?

We are in the Blackstone Launchpad at UCF and we have students here.

Let me see. Let me say hello to them. Hey everybody. Ciao. Ciao from Italy.

So we are here and they— we have this actually up on the big screen so they can see you. We just didn't get the sound quite figured out. Um, they gave me a high chair, so I have to kind of like pull myself into the table here. Oh, all right. So, uh, this is Blab, and you can start your own recordings very simply by going to blab.im. All right, and you need a Twitter account to do your Blab. That's all you need. It's free. If you have a Mac, you can use your camera and your speaker on your Mac, your microphone. It works pretty good. I have not had any issues. Always good to have a pair of headphones nearby in case you start to get an echo. With this kind of a microphone, you usually don't need one, and with a Mac, you usually don't need one. But it's always good to have close by because that way if you start echoing, last thing you want to do is ruin the recording or ruin the experience for those that are watching. So we've had— we've got 8 people. You see up the top, 18 people have come in and gone. 8 people have— are viewing us right now. And you can go to the top here and you can actually see who is watching. Nick Hutchins.

John— I know John just joined in. Human too. John Prado.

Yeah, hey, ciao.

Ciao, ciao.

If you want to say hello. And then there's someone anonymous watching. You don't need to have a Twitter account. You just can't comment or join if you don't sign in through Twitter. And it's not that it's affiliated with Twitter in any way. It's just that it's built to work very well. It's also built to work on Chrome. So it works really, really well on desktop and on laptop. It has an iOS app for your iPhone, and it works very well on iPhone and iPad. It is spotty on Android, even using Chrome. I did some great shows from the World Food Championships a couple weeks ago. I was down in the trenches, I was behind the stoves. I was the only one brave enough to go behind them because I am a chef, so I knew what I should and shouldn't do. And when I went back to view them and everything looked great. When I went back to view them, I was frozen the entire time. Had great bandwidth. Don't know why. It's in beta. Can't get mad. All right, and I'm on an Android without an app. So that being said, and I'm going to be getting an iPad to carry with me when I do these kind of shows out and about.

So you—

have you guys done anything out and about yet?

We did. We did last month. We did. It was, it was a real fun experience. We did Live from the USA Pavilion at the Milan Expo in Italy. And Betty started the show. And I did mobile, I was walking around. The key things to doing this sort of thing is you need to have minimum an LTE connection or 4G connection. 3G is very rough. Right. And even like that, we had some issues, didn't we, sweetie?

We always have some issues.

But it was fun. I mean, people were like really excited to be able to join in. And we gave a tour to the press people at the US Expo, which is super cool.. So we were able to show some people around and it was a mobile app, a mobile live lab. It's not the ideal situation, but it works.

Yeah, it is. And the thing to remember too, that is about bandwidth and it is about having enough to do justice to what you're doing. You see Carla's trying to join, but she has a poor internet signal. So I kicked her off. When she came on, once I saw that. So you want to have— when people join you, you want them to have good bandwidth so they can actually converse with you, because this is what this is about. It's not about just, you know, with Periscope. I said Periscope's great, but you're kind of just talking to a stream that keeps moving. They can still have all the conversation here, and they can talk to each other, as you can see there. So one of the great things about having a medium like Blab that is live streaming that has engagement is that while you're talking to them, while you're doing your bit on them, they can also talk to each other and catch up with each other. And then the engagement level really goes up. People really— it's not just about listening to you talk, it's about having a good time while you're doing it. Alright, so people will come and say hi to each other, they'll ask each other questions, and you make some relationships, you meet new people that way. So this is what's really cool about this.

Can I ask a question to the students?

Sure.

Are they going to be graded at the end of this?

No, no grades, no grades. Perfect. Not on this. Nazim was actually the person that told me about Blab. We talk regularly on a Google+ Hangout and we're chatting one day and he's going, "Oh man, you got to check out Blab." And I'm going, "Oh crap, one more thing." Social media is like, ah, I'm just so tired of this, especially since Periscope really wasn't working for me. So I got on it, my first show was 3 hours long, could not get off, and I finally had to keep telling people I gotta go, and I mean I really gotta go. So we finally closed it off, and then I have been kind of addicted to Blab since then. It's gone through a lot of changing, as live streaming is gonna be. So when I talk about live streaming and I show you how this works and the fact that we can be in the same room, now two other people can join with us. So when we're talking, you know, the difference between this and with Google was everybody was on the bottom and you never really felt like you were part of the conversation. They'd let you up to the big person's table every now and then, you know, otherwise you were sitting at the kids' table the whole time. But with this, we're all in the same room. And we can sit here and have a glass of wine and just talk. Or as you saw with my cooking show, I can have two cameras set up and actually demonstrate something hands-on while I'm still talking to you and have another person on. The fact that I made them a co-host is if I was to leave, or if while I'm doing whatever I'm doing and someone wanted to join, they have the capability now of letting these people in kicking someone out that might be disruptive, or, you know, if I should freeze or block off, I don't lose the show. They're still there, they're running things. And having a co-host, I'm telling you, is a really good thing. You may not understand the whole value of that, but talking to yourself can get old really, really quick, especially like when I was doing the cooking demo. I'm like, God, please somebody come in and ask me a question. No one wants to, they're all like intimidated. I don't know why, because I'm a chef, I don't understand that, you know, but they won't come in. So finally you get someone in who can help relieve some of the tension of you trying to do it alone. Because, you know, I've done 400 of these and I still get nervous for every one of them.

I can't believe that, Chef. I do. Is that really true?

That's God's honest truth. I told you.

You're like the veteran of Hangouts. Now I'm blabbing. You know, every— your weekly show is fantastic. Thank you. Thank you.

I'll send you the money later. Thank you. So anyway, it's just good to have a co-host to help keep a flow of things going, you know. So think about that. If you're doing it as podcast, like I said, the beauty of Blab is that they send you an MP4 file so you have all the video and you can edit it, and they also send you an MP3 free file. So if you want to make a podcast from it, and the audio quality, as long as you're using a good microphone, is stellar. So you don't have to worry about that. So you can pop a bumper on the front, the end, throw a commercial in. It's always good. And I always forget to say, hi, I'm Chef Dennis Littley, and we are here using Blab at the UCF Blackstone Launchpad, and we're talking about social media, and we're talking about small business and how we use Blab. So it's always good to throw that in every now and then. And I actually had a co-host the other day who did that constantly, which was wonderful. It was Robert Stern. Why don't you ping Robert Stern, see if he's around?

Sure.

See if he can come in. But the beauty of this is too, is that you meet people from all over the world. You can talk to people from all over the world. We did a writing seminar on here, and there were people from Africa on, there were people from India on, there were people from, you know, Europe is just given anymore because there's always people from Europe on. I saw Blab in Russian the other day. That was pretty cool. Couldn't understand a damn thing they were saying, but that was pretty cool.

Now, were they drinking vodka while they were doing—

no, it was two women. And that's why I saw them and I'm going, that's, that's not English. I'm looking at the thing. So I went on and they were talking, and I held my attention for about a minute because I couldn't understand anything, but I just thought it was really cool. I've seen them in Spanish. There was a Portuguese one on the other day too.

So we caught one last week that was in Italian, but it was basically they were just talking about soccer. That's all they talked about, comparing soccer. So it was, you know, it depends on the theme that you pick. But this one, they were really interested in talking about soccer.

You know, Chef, from this side, this side, this point of view, it's very interesting because Nazim has been living in Italy for 23 years now, and most of our friends are mixed couples. So we, you know, the wife is Italian, the husband is from the States or whatever, but still he's missing his country very much. So Blub was, it's an amazing tool to get connected with his roots in a way, you know, because the way he's joking, the way he uses his language, the way he's in touch with the things that is somehow are far away now, you know. So it's really, really an amazing tool.

It is, and thank you, Betty, and thank you for allowing him to be on with us today.

I'm happy she's here because I said, you want to join? You know, I said, and she says, yeah, I'd like to join to talk to the chef a little bit. And then I understood that it was based, and you know, it's over at UFC, so yeah, UCF, excuse me.

So that's pretty cool.

Yeah, I'm basically an FIU alumni guy, so you know, that's okay.

Yeah, he was from Miami, so, and then Betty spirited him away to Italy, but he is a Florida guy too. So, well, I just wanted to show them how we do it live. Before I shut this down, are there any questions on what we're doing here? Then we'll go into a Q&A afterwards. Is there anything you wanted to see?

No?

All right, all right. Well, thank you very much, my friends, and I will see you later. Ciao.

Take care. Ciao.