[Lex Computer & Tech Group/LCTG] FW: Hybrid Meeting Systems in the Town of Lexington

ggamota at stma-llc.com ggamota at stma-llc.com
Sun Oct 13 11:42:06 PDT 2024 

Cant wait to see it in usage.

George

 

From: Barry Kort <barry.kort at gmail.com> 
Sent: Saturday, October 12, 2024 5:36 PM
To: George Gamota <ggamota at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Hybrid Meeting Systems in the Town of Lexington

 

The LCC is currently in the process of installing a modern hybrid system in 4 rooms.  The work is nearly finished and should be online in a few weeks. 

 

On Sat, Oct 12, 2024 at 2:44 PM George Gamota <ggamota at gmail.com <mailto:ggamota at gmail.com> > wrote:

That is why I am pushing to get a proposal to the Town to outfit at least one room with uptodate hybrid system 

Sent from my iPhone





On Oct 11, 2024, at 5:32 PM, John P. Rudy <jjrudy1 at comcast.net <mailto:jjrudy1 at comcast.net> > wrote:



Great.  I was a very minor cog in the early days of discussing what turned out to be a Community Center (I was advocating a Senior Center) and somewhere along that path Harry suggested doing a lot more than anyone was planning to do.  Adding my voice made very little difference, but I am glad that I have lived long enough to see (maybe) it happening.

 

Seniors rarely flex their muscles.  I don’t give a damn about playing fields at the high school but seniors represent about 20% of the town and almost no money goes to them.  Town money is either generic (fire, police, library, etc.) or for kids (schools)

John Rudy

 

 

From: ggamota at gmail.com <mailto:ggamota at gmail.com>  <ggamota at gmail.com <mailto:ggamota at gmail.com> > 
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2024 5:25 PM
To: palbin24 at yahoo.com <mailto:palbin24 at yahoo.com> ; harry at forsdick.com <mailto:harry at forsdick.com> 
Cc: 'Steve Isenberg' <smisenberg at gmail.com <mailto:smisenberg at gmail.com> >; 'John Rudy' <jjrudy1 at comcast.net <mailto:jjrudy1 at comcast.net> >; 'Barry Kort' <barry.kort at gmail.com <mailto:barry.kort at gmail.com> >; 'Robert Primak' <bobprimak at yahoo.com <mailto:bobprimak at yahoo.com> >; 'Steve Blumenthal' <steven.blumenthal at gmail.com <mailto:steven.blumenthal at gmail.com> >; 'Jonathan Himmel' <jonhimmel at gmail.com <mailto:jonhimmel at gmail.com> >
Subject: RE: Hybrid Meeting Systems in the Town of Lexington

 

I also witnessed this system firsthand how it works, and the system is great. 

I suggested some time ago that LCTG can put a proposal for such system to be installed at the Community center. They have funds to do this (it might have to wait till next fiscal year but it needs to be in the queue to be considered.

George

 

From: palbin24 at yahoo.com <mailto:palbin24 at yahoo.com>  <palbin24 at yahoo.com <mailto:palbin24 at yahoo.com> > 
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2024 12:59 PM
To: harry at forsdick.com <mailto:harry at forsdick.com> 
Cc: Steve Isenberg <smisenberg at gmail.com <mailto:smisenberg at gmail.com> >; John Rudy <jjrudy1 at comcast.net <mailto:jjrudy1 at comcast.net> >; Barry Kort <barry.kort at gmail.com <mailto:barry.kort at gmail.com> >; Robert Primak <bobprimak at yahoo.com <mailto:bobprimak at yahoo.com> >; Steve Blumenthal <steven.blumenthal at gmail.com <mailto:steven.blumenthal at gmail.com> >; George Gamota <ggamota at gmail.com <mailto:ggamota at gmail.com> >; Jonathan Himmel <jonhimmel at gmail.com <mailto:jonhimmel at gmail.com> >
Subject: Re: Hybrid Meeting Systems in the Town of Lexington

 

Nicely put 

But Deja vu?

Haven’t we learned about many technologies that sat a the shelf at Bell Labs and then became “breakthroughs?”

Peter

 

On Oct 11, 2024, at 12:04 PM, Harry Forsdick <forsdick at gmail.com <mailto:forsdick at gmail.com> > wrote:



[Note FYEO] Please don't distribute this message.  My wife cautioned me after she read this draft.  Marsha knows best...]

 

Several weeks ago, my wife Marsha was talking to me about a meeting of the Tourism Committee that was being held in the Parker Room, a meeting room in the basement of the Town Office Building.  She described a new Hybrid Meeting system that had been installed there that seemed very good: it was based on a Zoom conference where all participants, both local to the meeting room and remote at another location were shown on one HDTV screen in the normal Hollywood Squares layout.  Presentations used the shared screen of the Zoom meeting and were shown in the meeting room on a second HDTV TV.  Remote participants saw the participants and presentations in one standard Zoom display.  As you would expect, audio accompanied the video and local and remote participants could have conversations.

 

After seeing what it was like to use this system in the Parker Room, I went home and joined the meeting from my laptop computer.  This was one of the best experiences I have had in remotely attending a hybrid meeting with presentations and conversions.  This is far better (and certainly more expensive) than the Hybrid Meeting System we built for about $800 two years ago -- just one of the three cameras in that room cost $2,300...

 

<49479A77-9732-48DC-8DAE-2F26D1CD6982_1_105_c.jpeg>

    

<7D653B97-21A2-48CD-8C6B-813AC9386BC8_1_105_c.jpeg>

LCTG Hybrid Meeting System on Portable Cart                Hybrid Meeting in Room 237             

October 2022

Parts cost for equipment ~$800

 

The major improvements over the Hybrid Meeting System we built for use by the Lexington Computers and Technology Group in our weekly meetings in the Lexington Community Center are:

1.	This system was permanently installed in the room: there is no need to set up the equipment for every meeting.  It's just there like the electric lights.
2.	There are several control panels permanently mounted on the walls that are used to start up a Hybrid Meeting and to tap into an electronic meeting room reservation system run by the town.
3.	Finally there is the best improvement: There are three PTZ video cameras (PTZ: Pan: Move left to right, Tilt: Move up and down, Zoom: In and out of a scene) as well as multiple microphones that can determine the position of the current person speaking.  The net effect is very similar to the Owl Conferencing System where the person speaking is featured in the Zoom video of the meeting room.  For those not familiar with the Owl system, here is a video Marsha and I made using an Owl:

    • https://forsdick.com/MeetingOwl/MeetingOwlPro.mp4

Owl systems are impressive for small meetings in small rooms.  The major difference from the Owl system is that the audio in meetings with many people or in large rooms is excellent -- even for meeting rooms the size of the Parker Room or larger.  I believe audio is still the most difficult media to share in Hybrid systems, largely because there is no hardware to zoom the sensing abilities of the microphones as there is with video.

<48F5A209-72CB-4D2D-AB73-F57A1EF52A92_4_5005_c.jpeg>

  

<73C3884D-A622-45FA-9874-8C435764D420_1_105_c.jpeg>

Town of Lexington Hybrid Meeting System in the Parker Room, Town Office Building
Instructions and Camera (in closed room privacy position)
October 2024

Parts Cost est. for equipment around $15,000

 

Early this week, I learned that the Town of Lexington DPW IT department was currently in the middle of installing similar systems at the LexCC.  Wednesday I looked around several meeting rooms at the LexCC  where systems are currently being installed.  Specifically work is going on now to add this system to four rooms at the LexCC:

*	Room 237 (LCTG's normal room)
*	Room 242 (the other room we sometimes use on the second floor)
*	Room 006 (the exercise "studio" in the basement)
*	Room 137 (the dining room on the first floor)

I am extremely excited to finally see this development -- partly because in 2015 I was on the town Committee that worked out the final use of the space in the building that became the Lexington Community Center. One thing that I proposed was that we outfit rooms where talks or meetings might occur with similar conferencing systems and equipment that is now getting installed.  My proposal in 2015 was rejected because it was too ambitious.  

 

This was frustrating because when I worked at Genuity in the early 2000's, I was involved in the construction of a prototype of a similar meeting room, which we had working in 2001.  It had the name Meetings over IP, mimicking the existing service Voice over IP or VOIP.

 

 

<image.png>

 

<image.png>

 

from talks given about Meetings over IP 

October 2001

Parts cost for equipment even less than $800

 

So, we are finally seeing designs that we built as prototypes in 2001 are finally becoming possible to install and to be used by non-technical people in 2024.  Granted, the system we built in 2001 didn't have as many important features as the ones being installed today, and certainly weren't as easy to use, but I must say from the start, I realized having to set up and tear down the equipment for every hybrid meeting was a non-starter.  This was a little more than two decades ago...  

 

Of course it took the COVID Pandemic to convince the nation that they didn't have to be co-located in the same room in order to have a meeting and that they needed these types of systems.  Showing that even great ideas need demand for them to be successful.  Sigh.

 

Regards,

 

-- Harry

 


 <http://www.forsdick.com/resume/> Harry Forsdick
 <http://lexingtontmma.org/> Town Meeting Member Precinct 7
 <https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=harry@forsdick.com> harry at forsdick.com
 <http://www.forsdick.com/> www.forsdick.com

 

 <https://goo.gl/xZXT2F> 46 Burlington St.
Lexington, MA 02420
 <callto:17817996002> (781) 799-6002 (mobile)

 




 

-- 

The Process of Enlightenment Works In Mysterious Plays. 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.toku.us/pipermail/lctg-toku.us/attachments/20241013/22dc1bd8/attachment.htm>

More information about the LCTG mailing list