When the City of Burlingame wanted to keep in touch with its residents, city leaders decided to tap the resources of nearby Silicon Valley to do it.
The city is one of the test sites for a solution tentatively called Meetings365. The joint project is being developed by Internet broadcasting community, Live365 and Oakland, Calif.-based CloudSource, Inc.
The solution merges Live365’s streaming audio technology with CloudSource’s Agenda and Minutes Management Web site application.
City Clerk Ann Musso, who is responsible for maintaining and distributing city records says what once took 20 hours to do now takes a fraction of that time and frees her for other city work.
“This technology increases awareness of community issues while meeting the challenge of making public meetings easily accessible to all residents,” says Musso. “We are very happy to be the first to use this.”
The site will eventually let Councils and Commissions offer live audio broadcasts of meetings through their Web sites that citizens can replay on-demand. During times of citywide emergencies, government organizations will also be able to broadcast emergency information and instructions over their Web Sites.
“Meetings365 is a paperless ‘on-demand’ solution to staying informed on government issues. Even residents unable to attend public meetings can now become well versed in community matters,” says former Burlingame mayor and councilman Mike Spinelli.
CloudSource’s customers will be able to insert this capability into their existing site as a “plug-and-play” add-on. For organizations that manage their web sites internally or with another ASP, CloudSource says it can work with the vendor to install and maintain the product.
The partnership is a boon to Foster City-based Live365, which had to shutter its general service after problems with its own ISP.
“We had developed a Version 1 of Meetings365 early last year, but found that we needed a vertically-focused partner to integrate and make it successful,” says Live365 Acting CEO and COO Raghav Gupta. “Our two companies have come together at just the right time to deliver a solution that we feel will become the standard for Local Government Web Site broadcasts.”
The product is scheduled for general availability on May 1. The final product name will be announced at that time.
