Brent Warner 0:00
This is the HigherEdTech Podcast, season five, Episode 16. What tech considerations should we have for on campus and hybrid events?

Tim Van Norman 0:22
Welcome to today’s HigherEdTech Podcast. I’m Tim Van Norman, Instructional Technologist at Irvine Valley College.

Brent Warner 0:28
And I’m Brent Warner professor of ESL here at IVC. We both enjoy integrating technology into the classroom, which is what this show is all about.

Tim Van Norman 0:37
Welcome. We’re glad you’re here with us. So this is coming out during our spring break. Yeah. Everybody else is having fun.

Brent Warner 0:49
Yes. So I hope Yeah, I do hope everybody’s having fun. But also, you know, there’s there’s things coming up right after spring break. There’s considerations. There’s events, there’s graduation, there’s, you know, all sorts of things. Whether you be a teacher, or if you’re in the IT side of things and making things run on campus. I think there’s a lot of upcoming events that people need to start planning for and kind of have their these questions around like, Okay, well, what tech do I need to be prepared for? Right? And I think, Tim, you and I have talked about this in the past where you say, Hey, I’m going to, I’m going to run this event. And it’s going to be in person and like, I just need these couple of things. And then it’s like, Oh, hold on a second, these couple of things, snowball into many more things. And so we thought it might be nice to kind of run through a little bit of a checklist, I guess, of like, hey, are these things that you’ve considered for, you know, for your event of the things that you need to have? Absolutely, that’d be great. So let’s, let’s jump into it. And, Tim, you’re going to lead the way.

Tim Van Norman 1:53
All right. So why would we want to do this topic, because tis the season for lots of events. Every time we turn around, oh, there’s a new this on campus or online webinar or a something. And we’ve got conferences coming up, we got all kinds of different types of events, online, in person hybrid, it doesn’t matter. They’re all coming up. And often people say, hey, I want to do an event, what do I need to do? Now, we’re not going to get into facilities, food, all of that stuff. All important. We’re techies, I’ll just leave it to check that out. But we really do want to talk about when you’re thinking about an event, think ahead of time about a couple of key things. And as you go through it, you’ll realize that, hey, those couple turned into a lot quickly. This is not meant to be daunting. It’s meant to just give you the idea so that when somebody asks you, you’ve already thought about it. And that’s really, really important, because that’s what I wind up doing a lot of is helping people on events and stuff. And so if you’ve got these answers, then I’m checking off boxes, and I can get you what you need when you need it. So the first part here, what type of event are you going to do? So in person, that’s great. There’s a location, is it inside? Is it outside a classroom? A Hall? What is that? All of that matters for an in person? Online only? Okay, you can sit at your desk and do it. Where is your speaker going to be? Is your speaker going to be with you, as a speaker going to be online? All of those questions come in with the online by the way, an in person event can have an online speaker too. So you got to think about where everybody’s going to be located. Hybrid, a hybrid is what a lot of things are going because everybody thinks, oh, this is really easy. All I have to do is have an in person event and stream it. Yeah. A lot of what we’re going to talk about is going to have a lot to do with those types of questions. Because hybrid is, I would argue probably one of the most complicated.

Brent Warner 4:10
Yeah, for sure. I mean, we’ll get into it, I’m sure. But even like one of the it’s like, where’s the camera? Is it close enough to actually see the speaker? Are they going to be a little.in? The background for someone you know, like, Well, I’m sure we’re gonna jump into those all bits. But it’s like, these are things that we all need to consider when we’re looking at it. Because when we’re in online, right, pretty much we know that our faces, I think we’re all fairly used to it. And we’re used to in person, the hybrid is the one that’s tricky because it’s like you have to accommodate two different totally different setups at the same time. And so I think mostly Tim, we’re going to be talking about in person combined with hybrid, right, with an understanding that most of these conversations also move over to online as well but, you know, make your adjustments as we go.

Tim Van Norman 4:52
Absolutely. So a couple of major questions you need to really think about where’s speaker going to be going Okay, how many speakers that type of thing? Are you going to be doing a panel? Are you going to be doing a single speaker? Are you going to do differences between those? The reason I asked that question alone is because now Do you have one camera? Do you have two cameras? Do you have one microphone? Do you have two microphones? How are they plugged in? All of these questions get layered on just simply by asking the one question, is it a single speaker? Or is it a panel?

Brent Warner 5:26
Oh, my gosh, well, and with the panel, too, I’ll just tell you, when I’m looking at it online, I’m, you know, like if I’m just looking at a zoomed out picture of five people in the distance, like that’s not engaging to meet a watch online. Whereas I want to see, I would honestly want to see if it’s a five person panel, a camera in front of each person and someone is switching it, or it’s automatically switching when they’re talking. So, yeah, for sure. I mean, not to say that everybody can afford to do that. I’m just saying like, what are you looking at for? What’s what’s the most engaging? What’s going to capture people’s attention? And how can you make your adjustments to make that work?

Tim Van Norman 5:57
Or somebody running a camera, and zooming in on that person and stuff like that? So all of those considerations? Again, we’re not trying to make this daunting. We’re just trying to help you think through the process so that you can identify it to the people that you’re working with? Yeah. So what does the speaker need? A lot of times a speaker will just speak. In today’s world, a speaker has PowerPoint, they have Google Slides, they have something else. There’s a lot of different tools that speakers can use, are they bringing their own laptop? Are they going to use yours? Are they going to run the presentation off of a remote? Or are they going to hit at a podium, they’re going to hit the arrow? All of those questions? What does that speaker need? Is somebody in back going to run it?

Brent Warner 6:45
Are we still in the age I I’ve seen so many of these presentations where someone brings their own computer, and then they don’t have the dongle that attaches to HDMI, I’m assuming, you know that itself is still its own problem. Right? Exactly.

Tim Van Norman 6:59
Well, and especially if, as a presenter, I only use I always have a google slides presentation and a PowerPoint presentation, both that are identical. Why? Because I’ve got it on a flash drive. If it’s PowerPoint, so I can even handle it if there isn’t internet, or if the internet is bad, or you don’t so you do everything you can to make sure as a presenter. I do. That doesn’t mean that other people do. But what can what can you provide that presenter, if you don’t have good Wi Fi, make sure they know, if you do have good Wi Fi now you get 200 people in a room, you might not have good Wi Fi anymore. So you got to think about those things. So what does the speaker need? What did the attendees need? Okay, are they going to be taking notes? Are they going to be sitting at tables? Are they going to be sitting, you know, Tombstone style? In in rows and stuff like that? What are they going to need? The people that are online, microphone, you know, the microphones for people, stuff like that, making sure that the sound quality is good. There’s nothing like sitting there online. And you got somebody 20 feet away from the mic who’s trying to talk really loud, so that they can be heard across the mic.

Brent Warner 8:19
You know – I still haven’t seen a good solution for this, Tim, but the chat rooms or the chat, you know, the the chat inside of an online when you’re in hybrid, the in person, people are never looking at that chat, right. And so it’s like, I know that Zoom has like, oh, you can log in on your phone and just look at the chat. I guess there’s some options like that. But nobody reminds people to do that. And so then there’s a whole, like back channel conversation going on for half of the participants or whatever else it is. And so it’s maybe do you want to tell people hey, jump onto the chat on your phone? Or do or do you want to just say like, Hey, it’s not going to be as important or, you know, it’s just what do you want to do with the chat? And what are your expectations coming out of that alone is its own problem with the when you’re kind of recognizing where the attendees are?

Tim Van Norman 9:05
Well, and think about your presentation. Is this something that you don’t want to chat on at all? Okay, if you’re doing a presentation that might be controversial, maybe you don’t want a chat on? Yeah. Online that said, yes, when we have a lot of our larger events, they’ll be a scan a QR code, and it pulls you into the so that you can see the chat, which is a great thing to do. But you got to think about it ahead of time. Because if you don’t, now you’re trying to have people typing this code into zoom on their cell phone, and then you know, I guarantee you somebody will go oh, I’ll just turn down my speaker. Okay, well, they don’t hear but now everybody online is getting double and squawking of whatever it is that’s that’s happening. So the whole All of those things are going to happen. So if you’re going to do any sort of online hybrid, you kind of need to have a moderator. That’s right. Just statement, we’re gonna get into some needs in a little bit. But we’ll hit that one often, you need somebody online that can mute everybody that can do whatever it is needs to be done, kick people out, whatever that is, it’s necessary, no matter what you’re doing. It’s important. So, so let’s talk about the size and the location of the event. So is this going to be unlimited number of attendees? Okay, there is no such thing. I mean, it can be a classroom with 20 people in it, it can be online, and you got 200 people in it, you it could be a combination, it can be whatever. How many people? Do you expect to actually show up? Thinking about the hybrid? How many people do you expect to be in person? How many people do you expect to be online? Yeah, what about the demographic of those? All right. So there’s nothing like sitting in a presentation where somebody has written in 12 point font on a PowerPoint presentation, and everybody that’s being presented to, that’s in person is trying to read this tiny little thing on this tiny little screen from the back row. Okay, we’ve all been there. This is nothing new. We’ve been dealing with it for years, but people still do it. And then they put paragraphs up, and they hit a couple of bullet points and move on.

Brent Warner 11:35
What’s the old advice on that? We’ve talked about this before? I think it’s the age of the person – the age of the oldest person divided in half. And that should be the smallest font size. So if you have that 60 year old in the room, then it should be 30 is the smallest font size, right? Yeah, it’s, it’s a good one to run on.

Tim Van Norman 11:50
Absolutely. And, and it’s a really neat way of keeping it concise. And think about it this way, when you see something on the screen. If it’s a picture, you glance at it, and you move on. If it’s words, you’re going to read them or try to if you’re going to do that, what if you’re presenting? What are the people that are attendees going to do? They’re going to do exactly that same thing. So they’ve just ignored you, for the length of time it took them to read that. That’s right now some people will read it, that can help. But there’s considerations that you got to make sure you’ve got also understanding the language. So Brent, you’re an ESL teacher. If you were going to a presentation, or having a presentation and the person is using big words, you might have a problem. Your students might have a problem with that. By the way, that’s even if they’re not ESL, this happens a lot, you know, you but think about it understanding of the language. So one of a presentation I did, I was called into present. And I was speaking through an interpreter to a group of Chinese versus business people. Okay, now, all of a sudden, this was the first time I had ever spoken through an interpreter.

Brent Warner 13:11
So it takes you twice as long because you have to wait for them.

Tim Van Norman 13:14
Exactly. But you have to the presenter has to know this, the attendees understand it, the you know, everybody has to know what’s going on, and to make everything better for them. Also, what is the experience of the attendees? Do they have a shared experience? Or is this just a very group? So a lot of the things that we do at IVC, it’s all faculty and staff and administrators. So there’s something in common, that’s IVC. There might be other people too, but the majority of the people that it’s presented to are, are related IVC.

Brent Warner 13:54
Which is to say that the tech that they’re used to, like, we’re all used to doing this stuff, but if you’ve got outsiders coming in and saying, Hey, I’m not part of IVC. So we don’t use Zoom, for example, right? Are we always, you know, I need to take the time to learn how to figure out how to use them or whatever technology might be part of that. Right? Absolutely.

Tim Van Norman 14:13
And, and it could be the technology, it could even be showing up in person and how are you handling those types of things. Somebody shows up late, somebody shows up early, those types of things experience the experience of the people and the demographics basically. So how big of a room or area is it? If it’s out outdoors, are you in a stadium? Okay, very, very different system systems you need in place, then teaching inside a classroom.

Brent Warner 14:49
Yeah, and I’ll just follow up with the both the size and the location, you know, the girls were gonna say like indoor outdoor stadium, all those types of things. I think when we’re a teacher, maybe setting up an event locally, right? We don’t necessarily think about all of those parts, because we’re like, oh, I run a class, I know how to run a class, right? And it’s like, Oh, hold on a second, you’re going to be in the quad. Now you need to go talk to the facilities and management people and see what they’re gonna say about this, or how to make sure that speakers are set up properly. And so you have to be careful that you’re not just taking your assumptions that the way that it works in your classroom is going to be the same as going to work. Even in an we have now that outdoor classroom, right, but it’s like, Well, do you know how that outdoor classroom works, right. And so, so a few of those points are, you just have to be careful that you’re not making an assumption that you understand how everything runs, you have to prep for that as well, if you’re making changes outside of things that you’re used to.

Tim Van Norman 15:43
Exactly. And even classroom, we recommend that at the beginning of each semester, before the semester, you go into every classroom, you’re going to be in and make sure you understand the tech in that classroom. Now you go from a small classroom to a lecture hall. Are you do you have the appropriate mic in place of the people in the back can even hear you? Right? You know, so you’ve got to think about all of those things. Yes, there’s a lot to think about as you’re designing an event. So now let’s step into the big area, this might have seemed like a lot more, but what are the needs of the people? And what do you need? And these are tools, these are going to be some people aren’t going to be included in this list and stuff like that. What do you need to put on an event like this? Again, we’re not talking about facilities and stuff like that. But do you need an ASL interpreter? Most of the time? Yes. Now, why? Because there might be somebody who needs ASL interpretation. Do you need interpreters for other languages? Possibly. You got to think about that. What are you who are your attendees? That’s why That’s why we went through the demographics and stuff like that first is because now based on the questions is that as you answered before you get into hopefully being able to identify these things. Do you have? Do you need a projector or a screen? A monitor or something like that? Does the person who’s presenting need a screen? Or is this something that they don’t need a screen? There’s a lot of different ways to handle that. You don’t ever want the presenter having to turn around and have their back to the audience.

Brent Warner 17:36
That’s right. So like so sometimes,

Tim Van Norman 17:38
How do you do that?

Brent Warner 17:39
Yeah, when you’re in a place like a performing arts center, you’ve got the monitor on the stage that they can kind of look down at, you’ve seen these, like TED talks or whatever, right? And it’s like, oh, you can kind of watch what you’re doing, as you’re facing the audience, as compared to turning around, or perhaps it’s less formal, perhaps, you know, like, so I’ve done lots of presentations in the classroom. And I’m kind of walking around the classroom during the presentation. And so, you know, it’s like how you the presenter, the speaker has to be able to position themselves in a way that they’re interacting and not just, you know, not like you said, reading off of the slides, turning around facing that thing. And they’re just looking at the back of your head the whole time. So yeah, for sure, you want to figure out that physical setup?

Tim Van Norman 18:21
Well, and along with that, the people online, you don’t want to turn your back on them. The fastest way, the fastest way to get to end a meeting for somebody is just turn around and have them see the back of your head while you’re presenting to them. zoned out really fast. So that said, microphones, we’ve talked a little earlier, how many things are you going to do? How many different locations are you going to have? So if you’ve got five panelists, you’ve got a podium, you’ve got a q&a stand where everybody’s gonna go up and talk. And then you have an ASL interpreter. You may have eight microphones

Brent Warner 19:06
Or pass the mic – Is that what you want to do, right?

Tim Van Norman 19:08
Or pass the mic. Okay. And now I guarantee if you do a pass the mic, unless you have it organized, right? The microphones gonna go from the right side to the left side and back to the right side. And somebody in the middle is not going to have touched it or, you know, you got people moving back and forth. It just it becomes awkward. But maybe that’s what you want to do. By the way, why would the ASL interpreter need a microphone? What if somebody online or somebody in person has a question that is communicating through the ASL interpreter? They have to be able to to interpret their interpreting both ways. We often think about it the other way as Oh no, they’re just presenting. But what if something’s coming back? That’s right. They have to have that ability. So I’m at a mic in the middle, simply for for q&a, if you’re going to do q&a. That’s really important. It’s, it’s really useful to have. Now, we just talked about several different scenarios, I’m looking at a minimum of four cameras right there with the scenario that I just gave you. All right, so that means you need somebody being able to switch the cameras, you need the ASL interpreter to be not a picture in picture, you know, not that tiny little thing down in the lower right hand corner, you need them to be full size, or, or maybe it is picture and picture, but you’ve got to control that environment, but you have to know what you’re doing, or have somebody know what they’re doing ahead of time.

Brent Warner 20:45
And I want to pause it here for a second. Because I think, you know, a lot of people are gonna be like, you know, in the old world, we don’t need to have four cameras, you just one is enough. And we’ll cover everything right? And it’s like, Well, okay, but you have to understand that we’re talking about the goal of a presentation for whatever event you’re doing is to capture the attention of people and we live in a world of high production value, right, where it’s like you can go on and watch, even a basic YouTuber is probably doing something that’s pretty in, you know, pretty graphically intense or pretty, you know, visually clear about what’s going on, and those types of things. And so the current generation really understands good visual presentation, it’s an expectation. And so I think we have to be very careful if we say, we don’t need all that stuff. But let’s just keep it simple and get right to the point and get to the content. And it’s like, well, content matters, but it matters how that content is presented. And so it’s easy to dismiss and say, Oh, it’s way too expensive to get four cameras, or whatever else it is. But you’re also going to deal with losing audience or losing attention, or, you know, or being less clear, even in person, right, because you might have, you might have the cameras focused in on people, but you might have the big screen behind them that’s zooming in on their face. So if I’m in the back of the stadium, or if I’m in the back of the auditorium, I can still see that person’s face. Well, because the camera man or woman is posting that up, you know, and zooming in on their faces, they’re talking. So I just want to kind of be careful, because I can hear the arguments saying let’s just keep it simple, right? And it’s like, yeah, I totally agree. Like, I love that. But like, we have to think about the whole picture of the whole goal of everything. And so is that going to work for your situation to keep it simple? And what are the sacrifices you’re making in in, in that decision?

Tim Van Norman 22:39
Absolutely. And think about along those lines, think about the fact that if you’re streaming, there is a good chance that somebody is watching it on a cell phone. Okay, and now you get six, five people, six people all sitting at a table or sitting down in chairs, and they’re spread across a cell phone, and somebody has got a whole front of a room on the camera, instead of narrowed in on the one person speaking. Now you can have somebody run the camera, you know, and zoom in and stuff like that. But all of those things take you figuring out ahead of time. Yeah, so. So cameras. I mentioned streaming. So for streaming, what do you need to stream? There’s one basic ingredient that streaming does not work if you don’t have and that’s the internet. So now you’re outside? And how are you going to get internet to that location? Are you gonna go off a Wi Fi hotspot? I hope not. I’ve seen people do it. Okay, it happens. Are you going to run an Ethernet cable into a building? Are you going to live on the Wi Fi that’s out there? How? How are you streaming? What is it that you’re doing to get that signal out onto the internet? That could be a huge question right there. You might have great internet, when it’s just you in the room. Now you get 200 people in that room, and everybody’s got a cell phone trying to connect to the internet. It might die.

Brent Warner 24:10
Yeah. So like, Have you have you checked in to see if it has a second account just for presenters, right? A lot of times you’ll see that and it’s a locked down one and you have to get that password for it or whatever else it is and then they have the public one that everybody’s on but nobody, you know, and then if you’re saying hey, by the way, I want you all to jump online and do this thing and then they’re all going super slow, but you’re moving then you kind of have to deal with that as well. Absolutely.

Tim Van Norman 24:35
So think about the internet, computers plural. Okay, when I set up and I’m doing an event, I have a minimum of three computers, sometimes four to six. Okay, now granted, I overdo it and a little bit but one of my computers is just a monitor. I literally have a headset on and I hear what the people online or hearing, I have a separate computer just to manage the event. I have a streaming computer set up. So I have, like I said, I can have up to six computers in place. Why? Because I want to make absolutely sure it works. I take up literally sometimes 24 feet of table space. For me. (laughter)

Brent Warner 25:19
I will point out that’s a little extreme. But yes,

Tim Van Norman 25:22
That is extreme – absolutely.

Brent Warner 25:23
Just think about what you need. Right? For sure.

Tim Van Norman 25:25
Right. But I’m saying I’m doing overkill, but understand you needed, you need to not be limiting yourself to a laptop, right? You need to be able to have everything working there. What speakers are you going to have? Are you going to be? Does the room have speakers built in? Are you going to use those? Are you going to put speakers facing the audience? Are you gonna put speakers in the audience? The more the more microphones, speakers and cameras you have, the more likely you’re going to need to hire somebody to run the event.

Brent Warner 25:59
Yeah. And and those things can also interfere with each other. So you just have to be aware of that as well.

Tim Van Norman 26:04
Exactly.

Brent Warner 26:05
All right, we got a couple more before we’re out of time.

Tim Van Norman 26:09
So, are you going to stream this on Zoom YouTube? Something else? Each of those has different reasons. I like them each for different reasons. So when you set up the streaming, are you going to use a q&a? Are you going to have people chat. If you don’t have anybody chatting and you’re not going to do q&a, you can stream it out on YouTube. And that is so much simpler than using Zoom. Plus, you don’t have to pay for how many people are joining. Anybody can view you send them a link and they click on it. And they’re they’re good to go. Are the people who are online going to be speaking? Is there anybody who is going to be speaking? It’s amazing what happens when people say no. And you listen to them. And you Okay, so tell me how that event is gonna go? And they go, Oh, yeah. So the online presentation will be like, oh, so somebody is speaking online? You know, that helps. You can’t really do YouTube, if people are presenting or speaking from online or q&a from online. So think about those things as you’re picking your, your tool. Are you going to use breakout rooms? Breakout Rooms are great in the right environment. But are you going to name them? Are you going to have themes? Something like that? Are you going to have moderators? Nothing like getting into a breakout room? And nobody talks?

Brent Warner 27:33
Yeah, well, and also not only that, like, when you have breakout rooms in a hybrid event, then you’re like, Okay, you guys are online talking about this thing. You guys are in person? How are you making sure that everybody’s getting a balanced? You know, getting represented balanced, like so that the presenter is going and hearing what the different groups are talking about? Are those types of things, or are people expected? You know, we talked about this with the doctor Begay when he was on the show about the high flex setup for his class is like our the classroom or the physical people, they’re expected to kind of accommodate the people in breakout rooms at the same time, you know, so like, you just have to play around with different options for that. So make sure you know what you’re doing.

Tim Van Norman 28:12
Absolutely. And are people going to choose their own breakout room? Or are you automatically assigning them? A common one now is having multiple breakout rooms? So is it the same people getting together every time? Or are you going to mix that up? That’s right, all of those questions just about breakout rooms. Again, we’re not trying to overwhelm you just think about what it takes. And if you put all of these together, I think we’re pretty close to an end to at least the basics.

Brent Warner 28:43
Now you’re ready to start your presentation. (laughter)

Tim Van Norman 28:49
Well, it can get you there

Brent Warner 28:49
Yeah, well, and I think you know, a lot of these things to people individually, you can say, Nope, that’s not a problem for me, boom, drop, drop, drop, right, or you’ve already got the experience on this thing. So you know how to run that part of it. Right? Cut it out. And so it’s just a question of like, hey, some of these things maybe I have thought about in the past, some of them I haven’t thought of the past, maybe I’m used to these things as a teacher, but I’m not used to this part. Because, you know, this is a different type of event or whatever else it is, or, you know, I’m a, I’m an administrator, and this is how I normally run things. But maybe in this case, it’s bigger or smaller. So I need to change those. All of those things are kind of, I think that’s what we’re trying to get to is considerations for what works.

Tim Van Norman 29:29
And understand that. I have done presentations where I had one computer running to events where you don’t need to have six. I do overkill on some of that stuff. But just understand that that’s going to be it’s a very different presentation. Depending on how many are can depend on what your actual needs are.

Brent Warner 29:54
All right. So lots to look at. I will put this up kind of as like a little checklist. that you can kind of copy and paste or use as a guide for yourself. That’ll still be up in the show notes. But take a look if it’s useful for you. And then you can add or subtract what you need or don’t need for your own personal presentations.

Tim Van Norman 30:11
And we’d love to know your thoughts. What else did we miss? And what did we overkill on?

Brent Warner 30:17
The six computers might be overkill for some people. (laughter) But maybe not, maybe not.

Tim Van Norman 30:24
Thank you for listening today. In this episode, we took a look at what technology considerations we should have for on campus and hybrid events. For more information about the show, please visit our website at the higher ed tech podcast.com. There you’ll find our podcasts and links to the information we’ve covered.

Brent Warner 30:40
As always, we do want your feedback. So please go to the higher ed tech podcast.com. And let us know your thoughts and if you have ideas for future shows, there’s a link over there where you can give us your topic ideas for

Tim Van Norman 30:51
everyone at IVC. That’s listening. If you need help with technology questions, please contact IVC technical support. If you have questions about technology in your classroom, please stop by the IVC Training Center in a 322 or contact me Tim Van Norman AT tvannorman@ivc.edu.

Brent Warner 31:08
And if you want to reach out to me about the show, you can find me on LinkedIn at @BrentGWarner.

Tim Van Norman 31:15
I’m Tim Van Norman,

Brent Warner 31:16
and I’m Brent Warner and we hope this episode has helped you on the road from possibility to actuality. Take care everybody