Dalai Lama appearances available on Web, cable

Dalai Lama appearances available on Web, cable

BY DOUG KILLGORE
Special to the Rice News

Although tickets for today’s Dalai Lama lectures are no longer available, the Rice University community can still experience the lectures through their computers or televisions.

Rice’s Division of Information Technology (IT) will webcast the Dalai Lama’s visit live as it happens at <http://webcast.rice.edu> and archive the lectures for future use.

Rice will also stream a high-quality Internet video signal to the Houston Community College video broadcast group. Then the signal will be broadcast over their cable TV channel to over 500,000 potential viewers in the Houston area. This innovative use of Internet video technologies between the schools is a first for both institutions. The technology plan was developed, built and tested in just a few days.

IT’s live webcasts come in handy for events with limited seating — as in the case of the Dalai Lama’s lectures. This resource also provides the opportunity to view the event at a later, more convenient time.

The main resource is a list of future webcast events like the Dalai Lama’s visit and a talk by a former astronaut on “Breaking the Sound Barrier.” There’s also a list of recently archived webcasts, which may be played at any time, such as President Leebron’s matriculation address and the June 30 hearings of the Commission on Federal Election Reform chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker III. A 30-minute video is available on the record-breaking nanotube model assembled in the main quadrangle this past spring by Rice nanotechnology students.

A larger archive of past events is also available. In the past five years, Rice has webcast and archived over 250 programs. The rate at which events are captured on the Web is constantly increasing. The range of subjects varies from Houston’s air quality to the performance of metal baseball bats. Speakers range from Rice faculty to visiting notables, such as famed heart surgeon Michael DeBakey, and from heads of state to panels of leading authorities in their field. Videos of several past Rice events are being added to the selection, including commencement and the School of Social Sciences’ 25th Anniversary Celebration.

For more information on having an event recorded or webcast, or to submit an archival video for inclusion in the Rice Web archives, contact <avevents@rice.edu>.

—Doug Killgore is an audio-visual production specialist in academic and research computing.