THE CHALLENGE

Obama has been an early adopter of new tech throughout his time in office. He was the first to tweet from @POTUS on Twitter, the first to go live on Facebook, and even the first to use a filter on Snapchat. So when it came time for him to give his farewell speech, we were excited to be chartered by the White House to give him one last technological milestone.

STRATEGY

We wanted to bring people into the convention center and feel Obama’s energy as he delivered his final words to the people of Chicago. So we set out to create the first 360° live stream of a presidential address. It’s not easy being first. We were given 10 days to make the nearly impossible, possible.

  • Securing access to 360 streaming across YouTube, Periscope, and Facebook – a feature that was still in alpha for Facebook and had only been accessible to National Geographic prior to us.

  • Developing and executing a solution to stitch footage in real-time from multiple 360 cameras and simulcast across three social networks. Thanks to our friends at Nokia, Vantage.TV, and Radiant Images

  • Coordinating with the Secret Service to place cameras in the convention’s seating area, to put viewers at the center of the action. (We were the only media outlet given this permission.)

RESULTS

The live stream of President Obama’s farewell address was watched by enough people to fill the McCormick convention center 100x.

The project set the stage for 360° news broadcasts in the future and was covered by dozens of prominent news sources, including The Verge, Fortune.com, and Variety, resulting in over 1 million impressions.

We’re grateful we got to be a part of this historic event and can’t wait to see what’s next in Barrak’s future. HOLOBAMA?