I’d be grateful (yet again) for help please - this time with a tech issue our photo club is wrestling with.
Through Covid our photo club switched to using Zoom for all our meetings which enabled the club to survive.
Post-Covid we have returned to face to face meetings in one of the village “salles”, except for one Thursday a month when we continue with Zoom. This is the Thursday when we critique the photos people have put in for our monthly competition. A few of our members are now based in the UK and this monthly session enables them to keep in touch with the club.
The problem we have is that the club is 50:50 French : English speakers and we are actively moving to making it more French. But most of the French members do not participate in the Zoom sessions - either technophobes and /or they feel they will not cope if everyone is speaking English . (In fact we’re happy to switch to French, but it’s not the same online as in the hall.) That means they miss out on the feedback about their photos.
So, we are seeking a way to hold all our meetings in the Salle (for the sake of our French members) but to have a Zoom link so that our UK members (who are much more Zoom savvy) can join us.
We need to find a solution that enables our members in the UK to see people in the room and hear what they are saying, and to see the screen where the photos are being projected and be able to comment/contribute themselves and not just be observers.
Our concern is that all of this is sounding horribly expensive and the club does not have the money.
Can anyone please suggest a solution that the club might be able to afford? As always, thanks. Sue
I’d stick a laptop at one end and arrange the participants in a horseshoe shape around the table.
You may find that you need some external speakers (20€ upwards) and/or an external ‘conference’ mic to give the best results but try the basic set up first. You’ll probably find that it’s fine.
I should add that my company used to arrange exactly this sort of thing for very large companies. It’s amazing how often a simple solution was entirely suitable. To do it ‘properly’ could easily cost over €10k…
This is going to be challenging. My company struggles with this now that more and more people are returning to working in the office whereas people like me continue to work from home.
You’ll need to have a portable microphone that’s shared amongst participants when they speak, otherwise it’s incredibly difficult for people online to hear what’s being said in the room if you’re relying on the inbuilt microphone of a laptop / mobile phone.
Also, having people sitting around a table doesn’t really work as the webcam won’t have a wide enough lens to include everyone. For our work meetings, we have people sitting next to each other in a line - typically on a stage but that’s perhaps not necessary.
You can have multiple people connecting with their laptops with each webcam pointing in different directions, but make sure they mute their microphones if you do this, otherwise you get horrible feedback.
We did this, albeit with a smaller group. The principles remain the same. It’s always going to be sub-optimal and to require patience, tolerance and self-discipline!
You need the group in the salle to maintain a fair bit of discipline in terms of who is talking (one at a time, ideally), and speaking clearly, because otherwise it is difficult to hear what individual members are saying. We found it useful to be rigorous with the mute button: whoever is hosting the meeting can use that. You also need to move those in the salle into position so they can be seen. You need a way to hear what the members at home are saying (something superior to the built-in computer speakers).
This is the kit we used. It wasn’t expensive.
Edited: Gareth’s idea of a hand-held mic may be a good one, depending on how eager the salle members are with their contributions and how you run your meetings. It wouldn’t have worked for us, but it has obvious advantages!
If your members are largely of a certain age you might find that there is someone locally who is tasked with helping seniors with IT problems. We have a great young man in the recyclerie where I volunteer and he has sessions for people as well as going to visit them. And refurbishes and sells donated kit some of which is pretty recent - 3 yr old ipad mini for €30 eg.
Ditto the above suggestions - our business networking group ran a few hybrid meetings during Covid, and it was possible to do. Getting good sound is the most important thing, people will put up with a dodgy picture but it’s hopeless if they can’t hear (though ideally you want both for a photography group!).
For one meeting I set up my professional video gear, with one camera on a wide shot of the room and a second camera as a “close-up camera”, fed into a BlackMagic ATEM Mini video switcher via HDMI, which was then connected to a laptop via USB, which in turn was running Zoom.
When people in the live event needed to speak we had them come and stand next to a microphone on a stand in view of the close-up camera, and I switched between cameras using the ATEM Mini.
I’m not suggesting you have to go to this level of technology and expense, unless you have a member who has the necessary kit, but having a mic on a stand and requiring people in the room to use it when speaking will make it a lot easier for the remote attendees to catch what is being said.
To show photos you can line them up in a photo catalogue app (I use PhotoMechanic but Adobe Bridge or ACDSee would also work) and then use “share screen” to bring them up in Zoom.
It only requires one tech-savvy person to operate the computer that’s running Zoom.
Thank you everyone for your thoughts and suggestions. This has been very helpful and has given us ideas for a way forward for us. I hope you won’t mind if I come back a bit further down the line if we need more help.
Just to say thanks again to everyone for your help and to say we have had a very successful dress rehearsal this morning.
The club has bought a rotating conference camera and a separate bluetooth conference microphone. The camera and the microphone are on a small table in the middle of the U-shaped conference room set up. The sound via the microphone particularly is superb.
We will be using two laptops in our meetings. The host’s laptop will manage the camera (via a remote), the microphone and a link to a projector which will be projecting the zoom images onto a drop down screen.
The other laptop will a zoom “guest” at the other end of the room and will have a link to a large TV screen, again, showing the zoom images.
That means those coming into the meeting from the UK (typically four maximum) will be on screen in gallery view and will be able to clearly see us and we will clearly see them.
At the moment, the acoustics are good. Obviously with a room full of people jabbering French we are going to have to be more disciplined.
All in all, very encouraging.