4 Auditorium Use

Video has already been used to share workshops, colloquia, and special events such as the VLA 20th Anniversary Ceremony among the sites. Such use has however been limited by the need to move the equipment to and from the conference rooms, often with little time to spare, and by the need for ad hoc extra microphone systems to pick up speakers and audience discussion well in a large room.

Despite these limitations, the response to trial ``videocasts" of events in the larger rooms has been strongly positive. We should expand our use of video to the larger rooms and thus to activities than involve larger groups of staff at a time.

Many staff would like to participate interactively in colloquia at other sites by video. Once permanent auditorium video systems and additional microphones are in place, all that is needed to enable this will be for sites to locate their TV monitors so that the colloquium chair and speaker can see remote participants clearly. As well as increasing the range of colloquia available at each site, this would let staff learn more about each other's interests through the discussions that occur.

Auditorium video use would also allow general-interest talks, presentations aimed at large groups of employees, ``state of the observatory" addresses, etc. to be shared across sites. An auditorium might also function as an alternate venue for a video meeting if a site's conference room is too small for the attending group or is pre-empted.

Some technical points are specifically relevant to large-room video conferencing:

• A video-capable LCD projector can be used to project the incoming video feed in large format for viewing by a big group.

• Ancillary microphones are essential to deal with speakers (who may roam, face away from the audience while they are pointing to slides but towards them at other times), and to capture audience discussion. We have had good experience with using lapel mikes for speakers and sensitive wide-angle mikes for discussion, mixed appropriately with the output from Polycom pod units in the auditorium ceilings. The AOC Auditorium in particular would benefit by having several additional ceiling microphones installed at the front of the room.

• Runion and Bridle have developed a way to control remote cameras through the video hub from a PC keyboard. This allows someone at a remote site to do most of the work needed to make an auditorium presentation available NRAO-wide by video, thereby sharing the workload of an event between originating and receiving sites.

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