A year or two ago we were asked to organize and manage a live chat event for Rascal Flatts at their home studio. Live chats are a great way for artists to stay connected with fans, and this was just such an event.  Live interactive broadcast and streaming services such as Ustream and LiveStream do a great job of streaming live video, but unfortunately there really aren't many solutions for managing the logistics surrounding these live events. Everyone wants to be at their best during a live chat. You don't want artists scrambling for questions on a laptop, or simply answering old question received via email many hours before the event. The real excitement comes when questions and answers are LIVE, not canned. So, to facilitate this process, we quickly put together a solution that included the following components:

• Web-based teleprompter controlled by the "dispatch operator"
• Multiple web-based consoles where other members of the team could field and enter questions into the queue
• Web-based management console that allowed operators to view incoming question "streams" on Facebook, Twitter and UStream (or optionally LiveStream). Operators could quickly identify good questions (sometimes checking in with management to confirm they were appropriate) and then adding them to the question queue
• Real-time previews allowing the "dispatch operator" (who could be on site/local or remote) to see exactly what the band was seeing on their teleprompter and view live video at the same time
• Count-down clocks and timers that allowed the team and the band to keep track of time

You can see the results (and components) below: