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New "Webcast" Service Provides 24-Hour Access to Board of Supes Meetings |
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By Santa Barbara Newsroom
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Sunday, June 03 2007 |
The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors has entered the brave new world of “video on demand.”
People interested in watching the board’s meetings – live or archived -- can now do so on their home computers.
The County on Monday announced the new feature, which provides the general public 24-hour access to the televised meetings at www.countyofsb.org.
Archiving the meetings on the Web site will eliminate the need for people to order – and wait for – copies of meetings, said Terri Maus-Nisich, assistant county executive officer.
“We all lead busy lives and now the public will have 24/7/365 access to any meeting that is streamed on our website,” she said in a statement.
The May meetings have been archived and are accessible.
The County teamed up with San Francisco-based Granicus Inc., a high-tech company that specializes in helping local governments like Santa Barbara County to bring video streaming technology to the public. The company provides the service to more than 250 government agencies nationwide, including 100 in California.
The County eventually plans to make the video streaming service available for all County public meetings that are broadcast via the County’s government access cable television station, CSBTV Ch. 20.
In addition to watching the entire audio/video record of the meeting, the public can watch selective parts of the meeting by a specific agenda items. An enhanced feature of the webcasting service allows users to browse a drop-down menu that includes index points and agenda items that are linked to the audio/video stream.
The service works best with a high-speed Internet connection common to most service providers today and Windows Media Player is required to view the videos. A link to download the free media player is available on the County web site.
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