An update on how it went last night and some lessons learned, in hopes that other Monger groups will do the same:
After some delays getting set up, the presentation seemed to go well. There were some visual problems with how the broadcast was done (I was off-site), but I think those are resolvable. The presentation was cut off too early, which was unfortunate. Overall, this was a good first shot, especially on short notice. Thanks to Steve Nolte for taking this from an off-hand remark to proof of concept in a few hours.
Lessons learned
- Have a separate mic for the speaker, especially if the ambient noise level is high. A boxy undampened room with lots of people making noise is not something to use a computer mic for. After the separate mic was set up, the audio quality went up immeasurably.
- Have a feed to allow the presenter to share the slides directly to the presentation software. In a dark room, getting a standard quality computer camera to pick up a bright screen is difficult. This probably needs to be multi-platform to allow for different presenters to plug in.
- Set up your presentation time to go longer than you think it will take. The presentation was cut off halfway through, as the meeting software held fast to the meeting times.
Rob Hoelz, Steve Nolte (from Brew City Mongers) and Corvisa (the host of the meeting) did an excellent job with the meeting (from what I could tell). A big Thank You! to them for taking on this challenge on short notice.
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It is awesome to see the on-air hangouts catching on. The Perl Mongers fire continues to spread out to new and greater audiences. I'm very pleased to see these improvements in membership-reach. On behalf of the DFW, Texas Perl Mongers, I want to congratulate you and your group for this. You are making our worldwide PM community stronger!
We also extend our invitation to your group to come join with us in our worldwide Perl Mongers hackathon.
Tommy Butler, John Fields
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