As people across the nation tuned into the TXJS Live Stream Webcast to view the conference from the convenience of their office, iPad or smartphone the conference team was getting ready to open the doors. It was a hot Texas day, although still early in the morning, as men and women crowded into the historic Paramount Theatre in Austin. Laptops open, a cup of coffee and a taco in hand, the audience got ready to hear from co-laborers and experts in their particular line of work. What event was this? The Texas JavaScript Conference (TXJS) held on April 15, 2013.

Watching @txjs talks today at work got me excited for @jsconf.Thinking about the beach helped too.

— Patrick Dillon (@patdillon) April 16, 2013

Wishing I were at #TXJS but glad to at least watch the live feed: 2013.texasjavascript.com/stream/

— Matthew Podwysocki (@mattpodwysocki) April 15, 2013

Topics Covered at TXJS

JavaScript (JS) may be beyond the comprehension of most of us not in the programming world, but for those in that field this event proved to be quite an exciting and festive gathering. Speakers from around the United States and the United Kingdom spoke on a variety of subjects, from HTML, CSS, and Node.js to things like web applications, entrepreneurism, content management systems, the legal issues related to open source, and how the British government was able to revamp their “user experience.” Sound like a jam-packed day? That wasn’t even the half of it!

How awesome to be able to watch the #txjs livestream. @jedschmidt is FFUUnny!

— Olov Lassus (@olov) April 15, 2013

Conference organizer Alex Sexton brought together this diverse group of developers and designers to celebrate, learn, and anticipate the future of their craft. With the TXJS Conf. being only a one-day event, there was a lot to fit into the sessions, and a lot of catching-up and networking to do in between.

listening to/watching the live-streamed talks from @txjs – thanks for making this available! 2013.texasjavascript.com/stream/

— jory burson (@jorydotcom) April 15, 2013

Live Video Webcast Expands the TXJS Conference Reach

But, with something as big and widely used as JavaScript, the estimated 325 people in attendance there at the Paramount in Austin were not the only interested parties; nor were they the only die-hard JS fans out there. This year e3 Webcasting was brought in to provide live streaming of all the sessions for TXJS. Once the stream went live and the talks began, 250 + online viewers tuned in to catch the event. These were not merely distant, mildly curious on-lookers who tuned in for five minutes and moving on – this was a steady audience-base that hung with us for the majority of the day. The numbers grew throughout the morning sessions, which began around 9 am, and only started decreasing toward the end of the day (which wrapped up at roughly 6:30 pm). The largest amount of online viewers exceeded 300. This means that nearly double the amount of people who actually came to Austin that day were able to be a part of the conference’s activities.

Frances Berriman | TXJS 2013 from SlexAxton on Vimeo.

Reaching the other 90% of Your Audience via Streaming

Clearly, whether we’re talking about a weeklong mega-event or a single-day, one-track conference, everyone has the ability to maximize the potential of webcasting technology to reach the other 90% of their audience that isn’t physically present. It was a pleasure to be a part of Texas JavaScript Conference and to bring the event to the more-than-300 people who were able to watch the stream that day. This was not only a success for this year’s TXJS, but could also have benefits in the future – anyone avid enough to watch a conference online for a whole day will definitely want to be there in person the following year! Like the final speakers who talked about the future of the industry and the exciting places it might go, we are thrilled to be involved in the business of webcasting, and are looking forward to what comes next.