Hybrid Meetings - Best Practices

[Lulu0913]

Does anyone have any best practices on hosting a hybrid meeting where attendees are meeting in a conference room via a H.323/SIP Room Connector and people are joining in via a Zoom meeting?  Please let me know if you use any special equipment.  Thanks.

[Rupert]

Hi @Lulu0913 

Audio can actually big your biggest challenge. 

All your remote participants should be on headphones and good quality microphones at close proximity. They should also stay muted in Zoom when not speaking.

Try to advise against remote participants using wireless headsets, or wireless earbuds, or even WiFi internet. Getting your remote participants on hard-wired audio devices and hard-wired internet will improve everyone's experience dramatically. 

In the Conference Room, you will want to use the best microphone system you can (preferably some kind of array) with a well-calibrated noise and echo cancellation system. Try to avoid using telephone-based audio.

For video - multiple screens in your Conference Room can be a good idea. Ideally three - one for Gallery View, one for Active Speaker and one for shared content.

Try to have someone (at least one person) in the Conference Room who is advocating for the remote participants - watching for raised hands or unmuted mics, or asked questions.

If you have presenters in the Conference Room, try to ensure they do not turn their backs to camera (and to the remote participants). Multiple cameras in the room can be very useful - PTZs if possible. 

If your remote participants are going to be on camera, try to set that expectation with them in advance - and do anything you can in advance to level up their camera-framing so everyone looks relatively well matched in Gallery View.. You can run a pre-meeting or rehearsal  event to run through this.

Make sure you have some Co-Hosts in your meeting in case you need extra hands to handle logistics. 

Make sure your remote participants can see the room participants.

For hybrid to work, remote and local participants need to be treated equally. 

Check out https://officehours.global/ for all kinds of other tips.

Hope this helps.

Rupert

[Lulu0913]

Thank you for responding Rupert.  I appreciate this and well share with the team.  

[LLEBDG]

I have similar questions, if I may intrude on this thread.  

We've been doing exclusively Zoom (Pro) remote meetings for the last couple of years,  but now there is interest (mainly on the part of library management) to have us come back to in-library for our discussions.  We have a couple of members for whom this is not possible, so we need to do a hybrid meeting.  Library management thinks this is a snap, though I don't see any evidence that they have any technical background.  Nevertheless, I'm  going to try to do it.  

There is a large screen monitor in the room we're going to use, which is a relatively small space (I'm thinkings about  12x12 or maybe 15x15 - been a while since I've been in this particular meeting space).   My assumption is that I will use  my personal  laptop to project to the screen,   but my concerns are around audio. 

As far as I can tell, they have no equipment for sound other than a speakerphone, which  is probably terrible quality, but it's what they have.   So I assume I log into Zoom on the laptop, start the meeting and we'll have the video.  I'll have to see how I can place the laptop so the camera has  a view of the  physically present members (this will probably be terrible). 

Is there anything restricting me from logging in simultaneously to the meeting via the phone?   I am hoping to get over to the library later this week for a trial  run, but it would  be  good to know where the biggest pitfalls are. 

I'm also concerned about feedback, so I'm guessing I should not rely on sound from the monitor (the sound from the laptop would  be inaudible more than 2 feet from the laptop).   So I mute the laptop audio and mic.   Do the remote participants  need to  use headphones  to prevent feedback in this mode?   Some of these  people are in their 70s and a) don't have headphones of any type and b) would probably be challenged to figure out how to use them with their computers if they did have them.  (Just for the record, I'm in my 70s too, but I have a technical background, though not in AV.) 

I don't  have any input  into the library equipment or funding, so  I don't  know whether they will be willing to ante up for better equipment.  They do have some sort of group meeting cameras in another room that I gather has been used for remote viewing/listening, but not for two-way audio to my knowledge.   They don't seem to be willing to give us access to that, in any case, but it may indicate that they will fund some AV  improvements for this room. 

What do you suggest  for the current setup and then what do  I need to recommend to improve the environment over the longer run.

[RHTirrell]

We're looking at hybrid classes, but struggle with how to incorporate assessments for in-person and Zoom attendees. We can use Zoom Polls for both, but how do we ensure that audio feedback or echoing isn't a problem if the in-person attendees access the Zoom Meeting?

[Bort]

I'd recommend using the Mute participants upon entry option, so that your in-person participants are not accidentally causing an echo. 

[Rupert]

If you have multiple in-person attendees in the same room, all using Zoom separately, then you will either need to;

a) have everyone join Zoom and use headsets, with earphones and microphone. But if any one person speaks, that will likely highlight them as active speaker in your Zoom Meeting  - which you may not want. 

 or

b) have everyone keep their volume down and their microphone muted (or "Leave Computer Audio") and use a dedicate  single insistence of Zoom to bring audio into the room - preferably with a speaker and microphone system intended for a meeting-style environment. Ideally you would use a "Zoom Rooms' setup for this.

The audio experience will also be much better for everyone if your remote participants are also on headsets and remain Muted when not speaking. 

Hope this helps.

Rupert