The City of Thompson, in partnership with Shaw, is in the process of implementing the livestreaming of council meetings. In the near future, meetings will be available, in real time, on the City of Thompson’s social media feeds.
City of Thompson communications officer Kacper Antoszewski said the idea originated about a year ago.
“It’s about making it easier and simpler for people to look into council issues and watch council meetings,” he said. “It’s hard to come to council meetings because the meeting life can be unpredictable. It’s a little later at night, and we all have our obligations.”
Antoszewski said that when residents can’t come to meetings, they might not know what’s going on with council or may hear a distorted version of what’s happening.
“It’s just about accessibility and transparency – that’s the long and short of it,” he explained. “The meetings are public to begin with, so more people knowing what’s going on in City Hall the better.”
Shaw already films the council meetings for broadcast on cable TV, explained Antoszewski.
“They’ve been working on broadcasting things through Shaw Cable,” he explained. “They’ve actually just done their first live test last council meeting. So we are going to hook up to the system and livestream whatever is on their camera and share it through our social media. We will be archiving it on our YouTube channel. The cost is anything from $150 to $700. A lot of cities already do this, so we are incorporating it into our own practice.”
