NCET Biz Tip: How to Hold Successful Hybrid Meetings
Courtesy of Jerome Pierce, Audio Visual Manager
ASM Global | Reno-Sparks Convention Center
By Dave Archer
While the State of Nevada recently relaxed some of the COVID-19 limits on public gatherings, many people still prefer to attend these meetings via Zoom or other videoconferencing systems.
This week, I’ll share two ways to create successful “hybrid” meetings where some people attend in person while others attend online. The technology you’ll need for these hybrid meetings can range from simple to quite complex, depending on how much simultaneous interaction you want among your attendees.
Please note that the comments I make regarding “Zoom” apply to most other videoconferencing systems such as Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting, WebEx, etc. And I’ll refer to people meeting in person as the “local” attendees and those attending via Zoom as “remote” attendees.
Hybrid Meetings with a Single Local Speaker
The most straightforward hybrid meeting involves placing a laptop—equipped with a built-in webcam and microphone—in front of a local speaker who initiates a Zoom call to which the remote attendees then log in. Your speaker will be able to share PPTs and other desktop apps and see and hear the people participating remotely, who will also be able to see and listen.
Remote viewers can ask questions either by unmuting their mics or by using the chat window. Some speakers find it more comfortable and less distracting to have a colleague monitor the questions and pass them to the speaker.
In any case, Zoom’s built-in capability to automatically choose the camera and microphone of a remote viewer makes this a very easy way to manage your remote attendees.
One enhancement to this setup is to feed the laptop’s output to a PA system and video projector so the people attending in person can see and hear your remote attendees. Take care to avoid feedback by muting the laptop mic or the Zoom attendees’ mics except when they’re actively speaking.
Hybrid Meetings with Multiple Local Speakers
Videoconferencing becomes more complex when you want to have multiple people participate locally. In this case, you’ll need several cameras and microphones and a way to choose between them. For example, for a hybrid board meeting, you might want to have a camera and microphone for each local participant. In my younger days as a broadcast engineer, setups like this required hundreds of thousands of dollars of sophisticated equipment, many trained engineers, and hours or even days of setup time. Fast forward to today, and times have changed.
During the recent NCET Tech Awards Ceremony at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center, their AV Manager, Jerome Pierce, applied this new technology. As you can see in the diagram above, we used iPhones as our cameras and “Switcher Studio,” an inexpensive app that turns an iPad into a sophisticated video production switcher. We paired this with a series of microphones and a small audio mixer to complete the setup. The iPad and audio mixer’s outputs were fed to an audio/video switcher and then to the local video projector and PA system, and to the Zoom laptop which allowed the remote attendees to see and hear everything happening at the Awards Ceremony.
In our case, the remote attendees were award recipients who would give their acceptance speeches via the Zoom call. To reduce the risk of remote participants accidentally unmuting themselves and interrupting the program, we limited the Zoom participants to only the people accepting their awards online.
However, we also wanted their friends, family, and colleagues to participate. The solution? We “live streamed” the Zoom feed to YouTube, allowing a virtually unlimited number of people to watch from anywhere in the world.
Once again, you need to be very diligent in opening ONLY the mic of one person at a time to avoid serious feedback.
This is clearly a lot of complex information to share, and I encourage you to work with your tech folks or with the AV staff of the venue in which you hold your meetings. The good news is that with a bit of preparation and practice, you’ll be able to hold your own successful hybrid meetings.
Dave Archer is president/CEO of NCET, a member-supported nonprofit organization that produces educational and networking events to help people explore business and technology. More info at www.NCETcafe.org