The Canada West Coast STC Fall Kickoff Meeting got off to a great start. The polished presenter from Adobe did a great job. He frequently asked if everyone on the remote meeting could hear and see everything. And he even gave us a brief look at stats showing how much the environmental footprint of this meeting was reduced with the use of remote meeting software.

The video from Rachel Bailie was done well, we could see AND hear that.

Then we saw many people in a room in downtown Vancouver start talking into a microphone. We were told that this was for the podcast that was going to be made of the meeting. They were quite animated people. I don’t know who they were - all of their name tags said Hi I’m “~_=~mn” from what I could see on the video feed. But there was NO AUDIO for the remote attendees to hear what was being said.

So in a remote meeting, this is when you type a message in the chat box to let people know there is a problem. The chat box was NOT AVAILABLE. Obviously you didn’t want to hear from the remote attendees. Of course we could have tried to un-mute the phone and talk to someone, but the meeting didn’t look interesting enough to increase the rudeness of the event by butting in.

So after giving it about 10 minutes - you were all very animated, but without sound - I hung up and surfed elsewhere. Others probably hung up. You may have recorded this meeting for a podcast I could find later, but I’m not convinced that’s worth the effort. I’m not convinced you were recording audio for the podcast either.

For the next remote meeting you will need to promise there will be AUDIO and someone manning the CHAT BOX in case there are problems, or it will not be worth attending.

Good start on the virtual chapter thing, but it needs work.
Clara

Hi Clara,

First, on behalf of the A/V and Programs teams, thank you for attending our inaugural virtual program meeting. As is the case with all first-time events, we experienced our share of technical difficulties, and are even now discussing amongst ourselves how to improve on this experience for next time.

Second, I really appreciate you taking the time to report how things felt on your end of the world. We entered this meeting with both great anticipation AND great fear—how would Murphy’s Law prove itself once again? From the room standpoint, we experienced only minor inconveniences. We count on opinions expressed from the field, and I agree with each of your comments.

Third, you are right that we should have paid better attention to the comments box during the meeting. Unfortunately, as this meeting was hosted by Adobe, the desktop layout was out of our control. I monitored the chat box from another computer in the room while it was available during the first half of the meeting. As I too recognize the importance of real-time comments during virtual meetings we will make sure that in our next meetings, we will keep the chat box visible at all times. It’s not that we “didn’t want to hear from the remote attendees”. We weren’t driving the desktop so we couldn’t move the chatbox to a visible location.

Fourth, there was really nothing we could have done about the audio quality from the room with the equipment we had.

The standard speaker phone worked well in our tests, as RJ and Tracey (in Vernon) were both able to hear us speak to the phone from the other side of the room. We did think there would be additional sound problems in a room filled with 30 people, but thought a longer phone cord would be sufficient. The cord wasn’t long enough. Also each volunteer spoke at a different volume level, and it was frustrating even to hear them in the room. But at least we could read their name tags.

During the meeting, we noted the importance of broadcasting the microphone through the audio channel as well, but we didn’t have the time nor equipment to rig that together for this meeting. We thought broadcasting the audio through the computer would introduce additional delay,  and it would be better to use an additional phone line. I considered instructing the system to call my cell phone so our presenters from the room could use my headset, but by then it was too late.

I’m not sure if we will be using Adobe Connect Pro again, as the cost of the service is prohibitive. Until a vendor can deliver a pricing model that works for non-profit society use, we cannot guarantee to commit any money towards equipment to make the system work. There were a lot of things that went well with Adobe, but there are a lot of caveats about focusing our efforts in support of a single vendor’s technologies.

Would you mind if I sent your post to RJ Jácquez, who may be able to give us ideas on how to improve the conditions in our room to better benefit others who choose to attend our meetings remotely?

Thanks,

Tony

Hi Clara,

Thanks for attending our first remote meeting. I’m glad half of it went well at your end. As Tony said, we are very interested in hearing how it was for you. Thank you for writing. I am sorry it was frustrating for you and obviously for all the other remote participants too. At one point during the Vancouver section of the presentation I saw that RJ had a box displayed on screen in which he asked remote viewers if they could hear, and I thought that someone replied in the affirmative. We will look into what we can do to improve things for next time.

Kind regards,
Karen Rempel
President, STC CWC

Hi Tony,  yes, feel free to share the information with anyone you need to. The remote meetings will need to have audio to provide effective communications, so anyone who can help make this happen can be brought in to the conversation. Perhaps if everyone was remote and using their own computer’s audio and video abilities it would level the playing field - just a thought.

Karen, yes, RJ did ask remote viewers if they could hear - I was one of the ones who replied in the affirmative, but that was for Rahel Bailie’s pre-recorded video. It was the meeting that went on after that video which was mute.