Live Conference with a Virtual Presenter - What is the best setup?

[tlabruyeredrown]

My organization is hosting an in-person conference in April.  We have a handful of presenters that still cannot travel but still want to participate in their sessions.  We would like to have them present virtually to the audience that is in-person.  Since the audience will not be dialing into zoom (since it will be shared on the screen in the room) I am wondering if there is any difference between the Meeting and Webinar platforms that I need to consider.  From looking over the product specs there does not seem to be a difference that would impact this setup but I am wondering if I am missing anything. 

Has anyone else used a setup similar to this... and if so, what are some best practices you would like to share?  Or technology hurdles you had to overcome (if any)?  Also, is there a difference between meeting and webinar that impacts this type of delivery? 

More details about our use case:

• These sessions will have presenters "in the room" and some "on zoom"
• There will be a facilitator on-site to help bridge the online to in-room delivery
• Only the online presenters and facilitator will login to zoom;  no attendees
• We have worked with the AV team at the conference center to ensure the audio setup will work 
  • In room presenter will be logged into the their computer (to presenter their portion of the presentation) but not logged into zoom (no active audio)
  • On zoom presenter will be logged into zoom and will control their own presentation and be logged into zoom audio
  • AV will setup Zoom/In-the-room Facilitator to bridge the gap.  They will share their zoom panel on the screen in the room for in-person attendees to view  Zoom Presenter content and their zoom audio will allow for the presenter to be heard and for in-person attendees to ask questions to the online presenter during the Q&A portion of the presentation
  • We are not using the Q&A, Polling or Chat in zoom... all of that will be managed onsite since we will not have any attendees joining the zoom room

[J-Zoom-ATL · Accepted solution]

@tlabruyeredrown I have some hands on experience with this sort of thing and I've used Meetings instead of webinar since you will just have the speakers dialing in. 
Pinning participants videos 

If you have multiple speakers you will want to make sure the host has everyone else muted calling into the call. Then they will want to make sure they pin the speaker at the time to make sure they stay front and center as active speaker (in case someone in unmuted). 

Speaking logistically, you'll most likely want to make sure you are tied into the audio system of the room you are in, or bring a speaker to plug into the laptop. You don't want to rely on the computer's audio as it will most likely be too low. 

Outside of that, the only thing to consider would be how you want to manage Q&A. I find it best to have the moderator controlling the meetings to relay questions asked by audience members to the speaker via the mic on the computer, but I've also seen where if there was a microphone system in the room it seemed to provide loud enough audio that the computer mic could pull that in with no problem. 

That being said, if you want people asking questions, you could also try and setup a bluetooth mic in a central location for those participants to ask questions which seems to work really well. 
There are several options these days so it's all based on preference. 

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[tlabruyeredrown]

Thank you!