As I have talked about before at great length, when I entered the world of livestreaming I literally dove head first into the pool and checked for water afterwards. Pun intended, as I have been livestreaming swim meets going on 2 years now. Within a short amount of time I was able to learn the basics and do a good job with that knowledge.

Through all of this I knew there was more to it, especially as there’s a number of resources available online about livestreaming. Where searching on topics has yielded me decent results, I also wanted to put some structure around my learning journey.

My quest led me to the book The Unofficial Guide to Open Broadcaster Software by Paul Richards. It is based on a class his firm Streamgeeks offers on the Udemy learning platform. As I have watched several of his videos and this was one of few printed books available on the OBS software we use to manage the livestream, I decided to buy a copy of it. Note you can request a PDF download of the book for free by filling out a form.

This book did not disappoint – it provided in a narrative style a top-down approach to livestreaming, chock full of examples and diagrams to provide a complete package of learning. As I went through the pages, I had the following takeaways from this book.

Provided the structure I needed – As a GenXer, my historical approach to learning is far from digital-first. Where I have taken many online courses that had no printed or tangible materials, it was refreshing to be able to have this printed book, carry it with me and read from cover-to-cover. The organization was just right and it gave me structure I would never have gotten from a YouTube playlist.

Validated a lot of what we are doing – With the approach I took with livestreaming, coming at it from all angles, I wondered how much I wasn’t doing that I should be. After reading this book, I did find a few things I wished I knew up-front. However it validated much of what we had done, and that gave me a great feeling. Granted we got compliments from many people on the end-product, but it’s also good to know we have used best practices to that end.

Learned plenty of tips – As I read the book, I took a lot of notes. Many notes were on things we haven’t done, and others were on what we were doing and options to consider. The list is something I am now working from to enhance our livestreaming process.

I highly recommend The Unofficial Guide to Open Broadcaster Software to anyone who is thinking about livestreaming or is already doing it, like myself. Certainly there are technical aspects to the book that may be beyond someone’s comfort zone, but if you’re looking to getting into livestreaming, they are important to learn and explore. There is a second edition to the book that I have also read, OBS Super User Guidebook: The Best Open Broadcaster Software Features & Plugins, that builds on the first edition and a writeup of takeaways from that would be similar to this one. This book too is available in print format or as a free PDF download. I plan on writing a follow-up to my original blog post on what I learned of livestreaming swim meets and will include these tips in that post.

As I share all books I read, I passed this copy along to one of my fellow livestreaming Swim Dads, someone who has been a great partner with me on this broadcasting journey, so he can share in the information and motivation to improve our livestreams.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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