Videoconferencing Out on a Lim

So you’re attending your first videoconference meeting? Here are some tips to make your experience more pleasant.

Before the Meeting Starts

1. Find out what the indicator of the microphone is for muting and notice when your site is muted or unmuted. In a multipoint videoconference (more than 3), you should mute when you are not speaking. Make sure your site is muted until the facilitator or meeting leader calls on your site.
2. Find the picture in picture (or display of your room) and pay attention to what others are seeing and hearing from your site.

During the Meeting

1. During roll call and introductions, let people know who’s in the room with you if they are not on camera.
2. Identify yourself when speaking. (This is John from Berrien Springs, and my question is…..)
3. Speak up and interrupt if there is a technical problem.
4. Do not expect perfection.
5. Be conscious of audio delay but continue your thought even if someone interrupts, and then pass the floor to them.
6. Necessary side conversations could happen via instant message or email tools. Communicate appropriately!

Ending the Meeting

1. Say your usual thank you and farewell greetings.
2. Send follow-up communications via email.

Your Turn: What other tips would you share?

As part of our continued celebration of Berrien RESA’s Green Meeting Month, here are some tips on organizing meetings via videoconference.

Communication Tips

1. Make sure all sites reserve the room or videoconference system to participate in the meeting.
2. Facilitate the entrance of people into the meeting; welcome them and make sure they can see and hear ok.
3. Facilitate the conversation. If the meeting is more than a one-way delivery of information, you may want an experienced videoconference facilitator to assist for the first meeting or two. This facilitation will help everyone learn how to behave in a videoconference. If not available, the meeting leader should not assume that people will just speak up at the beginning. It is helpful to call on people to ask for comment.
4. Side conversations should occur only when the site is muted and when doing so will not interrupt or detract from the meeting.
5. Make sure any materials for the meeting are sent beforehand; preferably digitally to all the participants.

Technical Tips

1. Arrange for bridging the sites into one meeting
2. Make sure all the sites test ahead of time (particularly test H.239 / sharing the computer)
3. Plan to connect 30 minutes in advance of the meeting to work out any issues
4. MUTE! The easiest way to make sure all sites are muted as they join the meeting is to set each endpoint to mute on autoanswer.
5. Prepare visuals appropriately for videoconferencing

More Resources

For more tips, check out these resources:

• Organizing a Multipoint Videoconference from TWICE
• Ten Tips for Organizing a Videoconference from the University of Florida
• Watch: The Videoconference Zone (Scroll down a little)

Not everyone finds CO2 emissions a top priority. In comparison to the savings by avoiding air travel, it seems that skipping a few 2 hour trips to Lansing is minimal. Still, every little bit makes a difference. So let’s build on the calculations of the past couple days to see what difference we could make in CO2 emissions by switching meetings to videoconferencing.

Let’s start with Polycom’s ROI Calculator, which suggests that one 5 hour round trip to Lansing uses 114 KG CO2.

Next, let’s try Tandberg’s See Green site, which suggests 118 KG CO2 (260 lbs).

So what?

So what does that really mean? Let’s try to get some perspective:

• Carbonify.com suggests that half a tree would offset that one trip; 5 trees if that one trip happens every month.
• The equivalent reduction in emissions can be done by switching one home incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb (300 lbs of CO2 compared to 260 lbs of CO2).
• If 20 people in one school year skip traveling to Lansing (saving 5200 lbs of CO2) and meet via videoconference instead, it’s equivalent to two homes recycling half their household waste (4800 lbs of CO2).

Of course, all these variables are hard to calculate; and none of this takes into consideration the electricity it takes to run the videoconference system. Still, it’s interesting to think about; don’t you think?

District Meetings at Berrien RESA

Another type of meeting is the type of meeting we are focusing on for Green Meeting Month: our districts coming to our location for meetings.

Let’s see how much time and mileage it costs for all fourteen districts to send someone to a meeting at Berrien RESA. These calculations are for one direction and are rough estimates.

If everyone got comfortable with videoconferencing at their own site, we could save 12 hours and over $200 for each meeting that met over videoconferencing! Multiple that by the number of meetings and 10 months in the school year and it adds up quickly!

What about you?

So, why would someone want to have a videoconference meeting instead of traveling? One reason is to save money. So, I thought it would be interesting to calculate the costs of some of our meetings – to be contrasted with meeting via videoconference.

Trips to Lansing

At least 10-20 people at Berrien RESA, plus several levels of staff from our local districts, often drive to Lansing for meetings.

A typical trip to Lansing from our county takes roughly two and a half hours one way. So any Lansing meeting takes 5 hours plus the time of the meeting. While not as extreme a trip as some corners of Michigan, it is still a significant cost of time.

The mileage is about 150 miles one way; or 300 miles total trip. At the current government mileage reimbursement rate, $0.55, each trip costs about $165.

If we avoided 20 trips to Lansing a month, that would save somewhere around $3000 a month. With current tight budgets, every little bit counts!

Many staff at Berrien RESA are starting to request attendance at their Lansing meetings via videoconference instead of in person. This increase will certainly continue to save time and money.

What about you? Do you save any money doing your meetings via videoconferencing? Do you know how much?

Our superintendent has proclaimed February Green Meeting Month. We have several regularly scheduled monthly meetings that will happen via videoconference this month. Instead of everyone driving here, participants will attend at one of three locations: here, one in south county and one in north county. The responsibility of hosting the additional locations is spread across the districts we serve.

Scheduled Meetings

• Academic Coordinating Officials Meeting
• Superintendents Advisory Committee Meeting
• Parents Advisory Committee Meeting
• High School Principals Meeting
• Special Education Directors Committee Meeting
• Counselor Academy Meeting
• Business Managers Meeting

In addition, several regular videoconference meetings will happen as usual.

This is the first time we have tried this with almost all of our meetings. A few have unusual circumstances, and those meetings will be scheduled via videoconference at another time. It’s a great way to expose all these leaders to videoconferencing meetings. One hope is that they will want to meet via videoconference again in the future.

In celebration of our Green Meeting Month, I’ll be sharing some tips and resources for videoconference meetings in the next few posts.

Happy Green Meeting Month!