Perhaps more than anything, communication is vital for connecting state and local governments with their citizens. Live streaming has become a key component of communicating public meetings to the communities they serve about anything from public safety to property taxes. AV systems help to provide accurate public records to ensure citizens are informed about decisions that affect their day-to-day lives. Public meeting spaces can be tricky to outfit with an easy-to-use AV system that anyone can operate with minimal training. We’re here to help.  

We caught up with Bob Griffin, Regional Brand Sales Manager, to get some insight on what he’s seeing in the field of local government meetings and AV. 

What are some of the challenges you’ve seen with city council spaces? 

One of the biggest challenges comes when transitioning from an environment that has not traditionally needed voice reinforcement to one that needs an augmented sound system. Another is having a single video camera on all council members spread across a wide space. Having one wide angle shot on all of them simply isn’t visual compelling. 

How do you make such meetings more interesting? 

If you’re using one of our cameras, you have 16 presets on each one, which gives the user the ability to zoom in on one or more people. You can even name the presets after the council member to help new operators know which preset to use. If you do that, then someone who is not skilled in video production can be a decent camera operator without a whole lot of effort. 

What’s your favorite live streaming solution for public meeting spaces? 

The AV Bridge MatrixMIX with TeleTouch is a very council chamber friendly solution. The touch-screen user interface with the TeleTouch is the easiest system to run and live stream to the web. 

An entry level solution would be a two-camera setup with the AV Bridge 2x1 Presentation Switcher. You can plug in the existing audio system to get a cleaner recording for the stream while having one camera on the council and a second camera on any citizens or guest speakers. You simply plug the USB cable into a laptop to connect to whatever platform they want to stream to. 

Do you have a favorite upgrade to existing systems? 

Yes.  A lot of rooms serve multiple purposes – fire department, school board, and so on. I’m seeing a lot of people move to a delegate microphone system where you have to push to talk, which triggers a preset for the camera to zoom on in the speaker. 

Any other inside advice? 

In the move back from all remote to hybrid, we’ve gotten used to seeing people clearly and individually. That sort of experience is much more preferred than a static wide shot.  

For more on adding AV solutions to local government, visit our state and local government page. For AV solutions such as mission critical control rooms, secure conference rooms and digital signage, see our federal government landing page. 

See a case study about how Longwood, Florida’s city council added live streaming capabilities to its space.