Gordon Cramer is the driving force behind Australia’s first online streaming radio service for small business, called radio4smallbusiness.com.au. He tells radioinfo about his company and how he stays connected while on the road.
Based on the Sunshine Coast in south east Queensland, Cramer’s search for first hand accounts of the amazing innovation of Australian small businesses takes him to all corners of the nation.
Recently Gordon Cramer found himself thirty kilometres out from Geraldton in Western Australia, but was scheduled to host an online seminar to customers.
With nothing but a windswept highway in sight, Cramer pulled over, fired up his laptop and Jas Jam handset, and thanks to Telstra’s third generation Next G network, delivered another presentation.
Small businesses across Australia have ready access to information and services through Cramer’s web site. At the same time, Gordon shares business knowledge and technology skills through online presentations and seminars to thousands of small business owners and managers.
His site hosts Australia’s first streaming radio service for small business and includes programs from a range of experts including technology specialists, legal advisors and business leaders.
In the past Gordon faced numerous issues working in regional and remote areas where internet access was unreliable, slow, or non-existent.
“Before the Next G network it was difficult to upload current interviews and view important new information, and being away from the office for long stretches of time meant my productivity would suffer – without an internet connection I was left high and dry.
“Now, I conduct interviews directly into my Next G phone, attach files to email, send them to my laptop, and edit and upload to my site radio4smallbusiness.com.au within minutes.
“Together with other broadband initiatives I have been able to offer cost savings of up to 70% for my customers – it’s been a real win-win situation.”
Gordon Cramer has made use of as much standard equipment as possible for his studio facilities: “The equipment I use is basic. I have a headset and a Logitech Fusion web cam. I use Blaze Media Pro audio editing software on the laptop, plus some audio conversion software for producing MP3s. I used a new site, Zentation.com, to upload a video and synchronized that with a PowerPoint presentation.
“PowerPoint is ‘interesting’ to stream to say the least. Zentation.com converts the slides to Flash and then gives you access to a synchronisation tool where you simply play your video and insert the right slide at the right time. What makes it special is that the video I took is actually uploaded to Google video in the first instance and then the Zentation.com site grabs that to create the ‘mash up’ and present a very neat interface. None of this needed any technical skill, its all drag and drop and very straightforward.
Interestingly most of the software I use was either already on my computer or you can obtain free software. The hardware consisted of the web cam and headset plus I have bought some lighting for the video
production, I spent all of $45 on that exercise, I use halogen floods from Bunnings. I guess the all up cost (not counting the laptop), would be about $400 or so.”
The business is really starting to move ahead according to Cramer, who says he has had a steady increase in enquiries and a lot more web site visitors: “It’s very encouraging and its prompted me to advance some plans; for example I have in the past week produced some promotional video’s for the workshops with more in the pipeline. Again I could easily do this on the road and upload the finished and edited product to a number of sites.
“In the next 2 weeks I will be doing some live streaming via a media server. In the first instance it will be from my home office but once more there would be nothing to prevent me from doing that from wherever provided I had the bandwidth to stream reasonable quality video. Essentially, I have a home based interactive TV station and an Internet radio station and each can be monitored, edited and updated from just about anywhere. From my perspective and from the perspective of the audiences, none of this would be happening without the enabling technology that Telstra provides.”
The whole experience has resulted in Cramer developing a new workshop where he will be showing small business operators how to create their own promotional videos and load them onto the web. He will present seminars in Ipswich and in Perth over the next few months.
