I like to say to my kids, “News at 11”. Well this is, news at 11. You have heard me say on our calls, I have been concerned about hybrid meetings. I attended my first hybrid meeting as a Zoom attendee --- the Randolph Sunrise Club, with Club President Sonny Holt. Their speaker, Sarah Tuberty was excellent, her talk was based on her life with a disability and her passion for starting, the organization, Disarming Disability. https://www.disarmingdisability.com/,
See the picture below – notice the two camera shots of the in-person room (Randolph Firehouse). As a skeptic of the hybrid meeting, I was impressed – part was because of their effort to make it work. Not only were the in-person members well distanced and wearing masks, they took the effort to include the Zoom attendees. From Randoph Sunrise member Sam Colwell, thank you Sam!
We are lucky to be able to use the conference room at the fire station here in Randolph. It's a large room which allows spaced out seating for our members who want to attend in person, and it has a very large TV at the front of the room (not visible from either camera, but would be beside Sonny when he was standing at the podium).
The technical setup was:
A laptop with a USB "conference mic" on a USB extension cable so it reached a small table in the center of the room. This mic doesn't have as much volume as I'd like and I have to crank up the mic volume all the way but it seems to do OK when set up like that. I bought the cheapest conference mic on Amazon that had reasonable reviews and this was our first meeting using it.
The large TV was connected to the laptop using an HDMI cable. Whatever is on the laptop screen is shown on the large TV, so I just run Zoom maximized. I use the grid view where you can see lots of people when it's everyone talking and switch to the speaker view if it's one person talking for a while.
A pair of powered speakers were connected to the headphone jack on the laptop to let everyone in the room hear people on Zoom.
A webcam was plugged into a USB port on the laptop so I could move it a ways away from the laptop to get a better view - the video from that was used to show some of the people in the room. Only the video was used from the webcam.
A second laptop was placed at the other end of the room looking the other way so that all of the members can be seen remotely. The volume was turned off and the mic muted on this laptop so it was just providing an extra video feed. It's important with Zoom to have only one mic and one set of speakers (both connected to the *same* computer) being used in the room. Otherwise you'll get echo/feedback.
The technical setup was:
A laptop with a USB "conference mic" on a USB extension cable so it reached a small table in the center of the room. This mic doesn't have as much volume as I'd like and I have to crank up the mic volume all the way but it seems to do OK when set up like that. I bought the cheapest conference mic on Amazon that had reasonable reviews and this was our first meeting using it.
The large TV was connected to the laptop using an HDMI cable. Whatever is on the laptop screen is shown on the large TV, so I just run Zoom maximized. I use the grid view where you can see lots of people when it's everyone talking and switch to the speaker view if it's one person talking for a while.
A pair of powered speakers were connected to the headphone jack on the laptop to let everyone in the room hear people on Zoom.
A webcam was plugged into a USB port on the laptop so I could move it a ways away from the laptop to get a better view - the video from that was used to show some of the people in the room. Only the video was used from the webcam.
A second laptop was placed at the other end of the room looking the other way so that all of the members can be seen remotely. The volume was turned off and the mic muted on this laptop so it was just providing an extra video feed. It's important with Zoom to have only one mic and one set of speakers (both connected to the *same* computer) being used in the room. Otherwise you'll get echo/feedback.
-Sam Colwell
What will the future bring, we don’t know? Rotary is working very hard to change the club model in North America. Each club (that’s you) has the opportunity to redefine both what works for your community and club. That change may work well for other clubs. Sonny, Sam and the members of the Randolph Sunrise Club, good job!
DG Jamie
Notice the two camera angles.
