Virtual Gatherings

Soon after lock downs became common across the globe this spring there began a rise of virtual gatherings. Amateur radio clubs and other organizations joined the trend. Although we are communicators by nature it is difficult to hold a meeting on air among a geographically dispersed group with a wide range of equipment and antenna systems. If you've ever participated in an HF net you'll understand.

I welcome the shift to virtual. It will continue to have important advantages even after the virus is defeated. We should learn to do it and to do it well. RAC (Radio Amateurs of Canada) held their AGM (Annual General Meeting) and associated conference this weekend using Zoom and it was an eye opener. It had its ups and downs, and despite a variety of problems showed how good it can be for our hobby.

• It was interesting to see the insides of many shacks across the country and around the world. How else would I know that the President of ARRL, K5UR, had a love of old tube equipment, of which there was plenty in his large shack.
• Avoidance of travel enabled far greater participation, including internationally. It isn't often you can watch a live discussion among the leadership of RAC, ARRL, RSGB and IARU. From the call signs displayed the conference included attendees from at least several countries.
• There has been great success by many clubs to replace or supplement in-person meetings and have interesting presentations by club members and to club members from other hams in distant places.
• RAC and other organizations and clubs have had tremendous success holding license classes that are likely to result in a significant increase in new hams in the coming months. They are popular and convenient, but until we have numbers in hand we won't know for sure.
  

One thing I learned is that large and complex meetings are not easy to organize and run. A friend experienced with Zoom in a professional environment warned me about that. Services such as Zoom are quite easy for attendees to use with almost no preparation when it is for just a few participants. Whether via the internet or in-person, large events are never simple. There were many challenges and problems during the RAC event despite the many experienced people working behind the scenes.

We will get better at it, and we must. I like the convenience of doing these meetings from the comfort of my own home or in the presence of a few within my social circle. It is quite a change from the business video conferences I regularly participating in during my career, going back to the 1980s! There is no need for special equipment, dedicated video conference meeting rooms and a technically specialized support team.

My terrestrial wireless internet service is quite poor and not up to the challenge of video, in particular in the upstream direction. As a consequence I have no PC cameras. It is possible to use Zoom and similar services with video transmission disabled although that removes some of the inter-personal benefit, but I have done it and it works fine. It is good that Zoom adjust video size and quality to fit within the available bandwidth when the pipe is narrow.

 

For my own presentation in the RAC conference I had to join in from a friend's QTH to have full two-way video. We had to scramble before the start when one laptop developed an intermittent hardware failure and he had to configure the software on a second laptop. We got it done barely in time. There were intermittent connection problems throughout that we could not solve and had to live with.

 

Despite our effort the webinar forum failed entirely halfway through my presentation and was apparently not recoverable. Unfortunately no one knew and assumed the problem was on their end. The Zoom service is not very communicative to participants of what has gone wrong. In this case it appears to have been on RAC's end and not the Zoom service. 

 

Numerous attendees contacting me during and after the aborted presentation wondering what had happened. I didn't know and I still don't know. Good communication from the conference organizer is needed to complement the technology because the technology won't deal with these organizational matters. That is something to keep in mind or the experience will be a bad one for many.

 

The time is rapidly approaching to upgrade my internet service and buy a camera. My only camera-equipped laptop is an antique of Windows Vista vintage. As virtual meetings become more common there is an unavoidable need for speed. 

 

I am beginning the planning of a video conference for an amateur radio group to take place this winter and I can now see what I've gotten myself into! There is a lot of organizing and coordination required, and the people to operate a large conference behind the scenes. I may regret this.

Note: I always feel a little bad when the pace of technical articles slow and I "fill" the space with articles such as this one. The reason for the delay is that I am busy doing those technical things that eventually make their way into articles. The season is racing onward towards winter and I am very busy. The technical articles will reappear, I promise.