Over the past 2 weeks, COVID-19 aka coronavirus has impacted the way we travel and meet. “Social distancing” has become a common daily term; fist and foot-bumps are the new greeting or parting convention. Schools such as UCSC, Stanford, Princeton, and Harvard have replaced in-person classes with virtual. Companies are either ordering their employees to work-from-home or giving them the option, including Apple, Amazon, Twitter Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. Microsoft demonstrated real leadership by offering to pay wages to their hourly workers due to campus closures. Apple, Amazon, Twitter, and Google quickly followed. Conferences have been cancelled including South by Southwest after tech companies, including Apple, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok, withdrew their participation. The public health story has expanded to an economic story, impacting global economies and industries. Dan Primack / Pro Rata talks about the many losers, but also the winners (e.g., web conferencing companies) in what he calls the emergence of the “coronavirus economy”.

(Author’s Note: personally, I don’t approve of a winner loser paradigm here. Technology is stepping up to help. I was at WebEx when 9/11 occured. While we saw our business soar, we (Team WebEx) thought of ourselves as working tirelessly to provide the world with safe alternatives to travel. Our ethic: social responsibility before profit).

The purpose of this article is to help businesses and organizations understand the many virtual meeting options, the tech needed, and the best practices. I focus mostly on Zoom and Poly because of my career-association with each, and the special deals offered to help our community’s businesses and organizations. For a more complete competitive analysis, see Resources at the end of this article. So let’s get started.

Step 1: Pick the right solution

Start by asking what level of interaction do you expect from your attendees? If you expect attendees to mostly listen, try a webinar or webcasting platform. These platforms are very powerful for attendee numbers of a few to hundreds or thousands. Webinar platforms also include functionality like polls, Q&A, testing, etc. for training, education, and corporate communications. To keep an audience engaged, you need these functions.

If your audience requires more direct interaction with the host, try a standard meeting platform. For example, most meeting platforms are perfect for daily virtual team meetings to collaborate on reports and activities, and are ideal for screen sharing, chat, wifi audio and video.

Zoom clearly explains how to pick the solution best for your needs in Best Practices for Hosting a Digital Event.

Step 2: Pick the right platform

Assuming you now have a clear idea of your audience’s expectations, consider the following:

Business meetings: Zoom Meetings, Google Hangouts, Microsoft Teams
Virtual Classes: Zoom Webinar, Zoom Meetings, Google Hangouts, Vimeo ( Vimeo has a particularly nice recording archival solution).
Conferences with multiple speakers and / or panelists: Zoom Webinar, Jolokia
Academic classes: Zoom Webinars, Jolokia, Teach Anywhere. Zoom has offered academic institutions a version of their free accounts with no time limit. Send us an email if you want to be connected directly to Zoom: info@santacruzworks.org
Pitch Contests: Zoom Webinar
Meetups: Zoom Webinar, Zoom Meetings
Family & friends meetings: Apple Facetime, Zoom Meetings, Google Hangouts, Skype
Exercise classes: Vimeo Livestream, Zoom Meeting

Note: most of these platforms have a free trial version which is well-worth trying before you commit long term.

Step 3: Pick the right equipment

Depending on the quality and functionality you want to deliver to your audience, you will need the appropriate equipment.

Bandwidth: start first by doing a Speed Test at your venue. With Zoom, hosts and panelists need 600 kbps / 1.2 Mbps (up / down) for high quality video, and participants need a mere 50-150 kbps (down). Most Santa Cruz households get 5 mbps / 50 mbps (up / down). Bottom line, you don’t need massive bandwidth; slam dunk. See Webinar Myths Debunked. Regardless, most wireless routers connected to a good internet provider can deliver a trouble free event. If in doubt, hardwire your host device to your router.
Mobile phone, laptop, tablet: nearly any of these devices with integrated video camera & mic can do this without a hiccup. It’s best if the device is not more than 4 years old.
Video: if you want to look good, you should consider the quality of the camera. My experience is that laptop video is questionable; whereas with iPhone models 8 or newer, the video and audio is mind-blowingly good SEE BELOW. You don’t need to spend $400-600 on a Logitech Brio webcam. Be sure to read New to Working from Home? Here Are Some Tips to Help You Meet Like a Pro to get a good understanding about achieving quality video.

Screen Shot 2020-03-11 at 5.29.45 PM.png

If only the subject was better looking, the test would be proof positive that your iPhone 8 or newer is the best video solutions.

Sound: If you are just having a casual family meeting, the integrated audio for most laptops and smartphones is fantastic. But if you want high quality audio, look at the Poly 5300 which is integrated with Zoom, Microsoft, and GoToMeetings. In our recent tests, integrating other wireless microphones to standard laptops was very, very tricky. Believe me: certified to work is a big deal! More about that next week. For now, hometown hero company Poly (formerly known as Plantronics) is offering our community 20% discount on the 5300 and other products. It just works, out of the box, no problems. For Zoom, Microsoft, and GoToMeetingsm, use discount codes Teams20, Zoom20, GoToRemote20 respectively, at site Poly Remote Workers.
Lighting: Lighting is becoming very important. Most corporations have in-house video teams creating video marketing content. Vloggers are producing massive amounts of content (see Lighting your Vlog). Companies like Netflix and Amazon are producing movies on the road which require expert lighting. Local company Light & Motion has been providing lighting solutions to these companies and industries for more than a decade. Light & Motion has offered our community a 20% discount on the Content Creation Kit. Send us an email if you want to be connected directly to Light & Motion to take advantage of the discount: info@santacruzworks.org PS we will schedule a tour of Light & Motion in April - both in-person as well as virtual.

Step 4: Practice, practice, best practices

Like anything, practice makes perfect. Even after producing hundreds of webinars for big institutions like Harvard Business School of Publishing, the ALA, the ABA, etc., I always check my hardware and software, and do a dry run before the actual event. These are some of my recommend best practices for business and professional virtual events:

Do a dry run 1-3 days prior to the event, test the audio, video, presentations, etc with the co-hosts, panelists, etc.
Have a second computer running as a participant so that you can see what your attendees are seeing.
Use high quality audio. If you have remote panelists, you might even want to send to them a known-good high quality headset.
If possible, host the event in an isolated room where there is no background noise. Do NOT use speaker phones. Headsets are imperative for a good attendee experience.
Turn off other devices and notifications. You don’t want alerts or phone calls during your event. This golden rule must also be respected by your panelists.
Separate the audio from the video. Yes, most platforms have integrated audio, but if your wifi fails, you may lose video but not audio if you are using your smartphone for the audio. You can recover if the audio is separate from the video.
Get a support team. Ideally you want 1-3 other people who are there to help you

Additionally, Zoom has put together excellent recommendations: Best Practices for Hosting a Digital Event.

Conclusions

We recently worked with Luma Yoga on their first virtual yoga classes, as many as 6 per day. For the initial test, Luma chose Vimeo Livestream. As an existing Vimeo Premium customer, Luma is entitled to unlimited event streaming. Vimeo’s recording archival solution integrates well with the Luma website. Presently, all Luma virtual yoga classes are free. At some point in the future, Luma will have pay-to-attend classes and fee-based instructional series. Vimeo’s functionality includes pay-to-attend events. Luma Yoga class schedule.

In our first practice / dry run on March 11, Vimeo’s HD video quality streaming was not turned on. So you can see the difference Luma has been using Vimeo’s recording archive function. You can also see the difference in the images below.

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We will solve the video quality issue by the time this newsletter is published on March 12. In next week’s newsletter, we will provide a short video on the hardware and setup, as well as a good example. Santa Cruz Works subscribers can attend 30 days of yoga for free at Luma Yoga: 30 Days of Luma Yoga.

Below are some additional resources. Let us know if we can help you or if you have questions: info@santacruzworks.org For now, stay strong, happy, and healthy.

Local Companies Who Can Help

4 Mile Analytics: tech expertise for virtual meetings
Cloud Brigade: tech expertise for virtual meetings
JBQAV: a full service & equipment rental, cameras, mixers, audio, recording, and lighting company
Yolokia: a full service learning platform for corporate trainings and communications