Behind the scenes at a hybrid Yearly Meeting
by Switzerland Yearly Meeting Tech Team
At Switzerland Yearly Meeting we held our Yearly Meeting event in 2021 at our usual venue, Herzberg, with participation from Quakers in person and online. We had indeed a technical team of 3 willing Friends. One person was on Zoom and two were at the venue.
Image:
We wanted to make sure that everybody in the room can see everybody online and vice versa.
How those online see those in the room
We used two webcams with a broad angle and could thus cover most of the room. Mine was a “Logitech C920pro”, the other was part of one Friend’s iPad but he also has a Logitech webcam. Both cameras were in the front part of the room, one at each side, each on a stand.
We used one laptop on a table and one iPad on a stand, both logged in on zoom. The iPad was linked to one camera and the laptop to two cameras, one showing the room, the other the person at the laptop which controlled the technics and/or moderated the session. (So the person at the laptop could make her/himself visible when moderating and then switch back to the webcam showing the room.)
How those in the room see those online
The laptop was also linked to the beamer so that the people in the room could see on the big screen everybody on zoom (incl. the picture of the two webcams in the room).
Sound:
- how those online hear those in the room: we tried out a number of microphones to pick up the sound in the room. Two worked very well, one of them was the microphone of one of the wide-angled webcams, the “Logitech C920pro”, the other a big standalone microphone on the same stand as the iPad. Both were linked to the laptop, so that the person sitting there could also control which microphone was used, the microphone of the iPad was muted.
- how those in the room hear those online: we linked the laptop to the venue’s soundsystem, which has quite good loudspeakers – needless to say, that one should pay attention not to place the microphone too close to the loudspeakers in order to avoid feedback.
Presentation mode:
The presenter would sit in front of the stand with the laptop, with its camera turned to them, so they were seen by those online. The presenter could at once see the people in the room and on the iPad the other presenter or his powerpoint, or during the Q&A-sessions those online. The moderator would sit at the laptop, being shown by its camera, open the session, introduce the speaker and hand over to the speaker, then switch to the camera showing the people in the room and make sure that the technics work.
Meeting for Worship: Both cameras showing the room.
Meeting for Worship for business: one camera showing the table, the other the people in the room.
For Zoom, the person online was with us almost all the time, making sure that only registered participants could enter, making the soundchecks with us before every new type of session (in some circumstances one or the other microphone would work better), making us aware when there were problems with the sound-quality, changing the views (spotlighting the presenters, even when there were two presenters in two different places, gallery view, speaker view) and creating breakout-rooms for small group sessions. She also made the recordings of the QUNO presentations. This big set-up you will need only for big events, whereas for a meeting for worship you can handle it alone.
What – in my view – one would need minimum:
For a big room:
- a laptop, linked to one good wide-angle webcam including a good microphone, which is placed on a stand. When you want to cover a whole big room a second laptop or an iPad (or something equivalent) with a camera might help. For presentations where you want to show the presenter and the audience you absolutely need two devices logged in to zoom and two cameras, likewise for meeting for worship for business, when you want to show the table and those gathered.
- beamer and screen
- a good external loudspeaker to be linked to the laptop’s headphone output
- the cables: HDMI for the beamer and a suitable speaker cable
For a small room:
- one laptop is enough
- one might even do with the laptop’s built-in camera, but then often the microphone is the problem! So a separate camera with a good microphone is very helpful for everybody (here is what we used, there might be others equivalent:
Logitech c920 pro hd webcam)
- a small but good loudspeaker to be linked to the laptop’s headphone output.
- you have to decide how well you would like to see those online, you can well do without beamer and screen (as we did in Zurich Meeting), then you have to place the laptop so that it is part of the circle, you then just see the pictures of those gathered online quite small, but for a meeting for worship that is absolutely sufficient, where to be together in spirit and hearing one another is much more important than seeing one another. Thus you can keep the effort low, by just using the laptop and camera with microphone. But, I would highly recommend the external camera/microphone.
Finally, make sure that the laptop you use has enough USB connections. We had to put in a camera/microphone (one device), second microphone and mouse so we needed three USB connections. Not all laptops have that much, but there are small devices that add USB sockets.
The Switzerland Yearly Meeting tech team consisted of Friends online and in person who worked together to create the event together.
This piece first appeared in the Summer 2021 edition of our journal, Among Friends.
