Running a Meeting for Live and Remote Attendees at the Same Time

There have undoubtedly been situations where you needed to present to a blended audience of live and virtual participants. Your slides are on display on a screen in a conference room as well as in the Connect Pro meeting room. How should you handle the meeting to ensure that virtual participants see the same slides as live participants and that private chat in the virtual meeting do not show up on the screen for the live audience?

The Situation
Imagine that you are the organizer of a one day conference where 50% of the audience will be live, attending in a conference room and 50% will be remote attending over Connect Pro. During the day you will have multiple speakers, some live, some remote. How should you set-up this meeting?

Preparing the Physical Room
In the conference room I recommend you have at least 3 computers all connected via a wired connection to the network. Avoid wireless at all cost as wireless networks are subject to latency (especially if everyone else in the room is using it) and to connection dropping: it could ruin the experience of the meeting.

Computer 1 is connected to the room projector. It is logged into the Connect Pro meeting room as a participant. That way you ensure none of the behind the scene activities happening in the meeting will show up on the live screen.

Computer 2 is reserved for someone who will be the Connect Pro meeting host. That person will be in charge of managing all the aspects of the virtual meeting like accepting people in the meeting room, changing layout, moderating chat, answering any technical questions. It is generally not a good idea to have one person both present and moderate the meeting.

Computer 3 is used by the presenter to advance slides or screen share any demo. This computer is not necessary if you expect each presenter to bring their own laptop. If the presenter wants to use a remote control to advance the slides, it will be connected to this computer.

Preparing the Virtual Room: Use Layouts
Let's say that you are going to have 5 different presenters during the course of the meeting. I recommend that you create 6 layouts:

• One that is a lobby / transition layout to be used whenever you transition from one speaker to the next.
• One for each presenter, so that you can easily switch from one presentation to the next without having to hide, load or resize pods.

The meeting host is in charge of layout transitions.

Preparing the Virtual Room: Upload Slides of Screen Share?
You have two options to present slides. You can either upload them into a Share pod in the virtual Connect Pro meeting room or you can screen share them. If you load them in a Share pod, you should ensure that the presenter review them to ensure that the conversion did not alter the slides nor the animations. It can be very disconcerting as a presenter if the animation does not play the way you expect.

In general, I would recommend that you load the slides if you have received them in advance and can ensure the presenter can review them when loaded in the meeting room in advance of his presentation. If the presenter shows up with his presentation at the last minute, then screen sharing the slides (while in PowerPoint's slideshow mode) is the best option.

There is another difference between the two options—if you upload the slides into a Share pod, slides can only be controled by pressing the -> and <- keys on the keyboard. So you need to make sure the remote control offers those control. If not, then screen sharing the slides is the best option.

Divising Meeting Roles
Host: There should be as few meeting hosts as possible. All the hosts should be very familiar with Connect Pro. This will limit the probability someone inadvertently changes alayout, deletes pod, etc..

Presenter: Only the person currently presenting should be a presenter. This will limit the probability of someone accidentally advancing the slides or interrupting the screen sharing.

Participant: All other attendees should be participants.

Selecting Meeting Room Settings
You will also likely want to change some meeting room settings to optimize the experience for both people attending the meeting in the room and those attending via Connect Pro.

Full Screen Toggle: Select the option to allow meeting participants to have the Full Screen toggle option. This will enable you to ensure that computer 1, which is projecting the slides to those attending in person, display the slides full screen. This is true whether you have uploaded the slides to a Share pod or screen sharing them.

Chat Notifications: Decide whether you want the chat notifications to appear while you are in full screen mode. I would recommend you disable them so that they do not show up on the live screen and distract the audience. You might choose to keep them if you want the live audience to see the questions that are coming from remote participants.

With a little preparation and putting these best practices into action, you will undoubtedly be able to run a successful meeting for those attending in person and those attending remotely.