Webinar - Maximize Community Participation with Hybrid Meetings

Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us today, and good afternoon. Welcome to today's webinar. It is titled maximize community participation with hybrid meetings.

 My name is Rebecca Woelfle. I'm a customer marketing specialist at Condo Control, and I'll be your host for this session. I'm also joined by my colleague, Richard Ramrattan, a virtual meeting specialist at Condo Control, who will also be speaking today as well as participating in the q and a session.

So before we get started with the webinar, I just wanted to provide a few reminders. First, this webinar is being recorded. A follow-up email will be sent to all registrants with the recording link once it becomes available. After the presentation, we will have a formal Q and A session. And, we encourage you to please submit any questions into the Zoom Q and A functionality at the bottom of your screen. And we will do our best to get to as many questions as we have time for. For those attending that reside in Ontario, a reminder that the CMRAO has approved this learning activity for 1.0 CPE credit. And after the webinar, upon leaving the Zoom meeting, a survey will appear in your browser, it will automatically appear to gather any feedback you may have and whether you require us to send a certificate. 

On our agenda for today, we'll start by discussing some of the benefits and challenges and really understanding hybrid meetings. After that, Richard will provide an overview of some of the technical requirements and setup for hybrid meetings, as well as best practices for ensuring a smooth meeting, as well as, how to really engage attendees, some strategies to boost participation and engagement, also how to manage q and a effectively. And then we have a little hybrid meeting checklist, some success stories, and then finally have a formal q and a session.

So let's start by going over hybrid meetings in a general sense, really understanding both the benefits and challenges that exist. So while many boards and owners prefer virtual meetings, that's not the case for everyone. Others may prefer having the opportunity to interact with community members. So that's where hybrid meetings come in. A hybrid meeting allows owners to decide whether they prefer to attend the meeting in person or online. It really provides flexibility and convenience for attendees who can choose what option they would prefer.

 

Now, ultimately with these options, you know, this helps offer increased inclusivity and accessibility for participants. And the interactive nature of hybrid meetings allows for instant feedback, enhancing engagement, and allowing for, again, a more inclusive meeting experience. As well, associations are also more likely to reach quorum when they give owners the option to attend in person or virtually.

Now hybrid meetings do have their own unique set of challenges that must be considered. For example, they do require a bit more planning. Organizers have to figure out approximately, how many people will be attending in person, how to add up some of the electronic and physical votes, the process for taking questions from people in the room versus people attending virtually, etcetera.

Now condos or homeowners associations may need owners to indicate also how they intend to participate. So this way the people in charge of organizing they can secure a venue that will comfortably accommodate the number of people that plan to attend in person.

Again, you must also have appropriate audio visual hardware or equipment and it can be a challenge to ensure equal engagement for both in person and virtual attendees. Now, by understanding these, benefits and challenges, you can better prepare and plan hybrid meetings that maximize the advantages while mitigating any potential issues. But with the right platform and adequate planning, a hybrid meeting can be very much a viable option for your next meeting or annual general meeting. 

So next, we will now conduct a poll for the audience today. So our question today is, what is your current experience level with hosting hybrid meetings/AGMs or annual general meetings?

If you're joining us, please select an option from the following list. And, the first option is no experience, completely new to hybrid meetings. Second, some experience but still learning have hosted one hybrid meeting. Third, moderate experience have hosted a few, that is two to three hybrid meetings, and extensive experience have hosted numerous successful four or more hybrid meetings. So we'll just give everybody a chance to complete this poll and see where we're at. 

 

Looks like many are new to hybrid meetings. This is why we are holding the webinar so that you can get a chance to plan some yourself. We got some experience, moderate experience. I think it looks like we're slowing down in the results. So, thank you everybody for completing this poll. It looks like 50% say no experience, and then, second highest is moderate. So there's the results.  

Let's continue. So, next, I am now going to pass it over to Richard who will go over some of the key points for planning and prepping for hybrid meetings, including the tech requirements and setup. 

So, of course, let's get started with the technical requirements and setup that are gonna be crucial to your hybrid meeting experience. First off here, we have your webcam or your video camera. So, of course, ensuring a clear and stable video feed is the critical step for engaging both your in-person audience and your virtual attendees.

Your built in or external webcam. So you can use the built-in webcam on your laptop, which is the most convenient and probably the easiest to set up. However, if you have the option, an external webcam often provides better quality, and it can usually cover a wider area. And this is particularly useful if you need to show an entire head table or if you have a head table with a speaker stand and you need a bit of a wider point of view. Sometimes a laptop is tethered to a charging cable, and an external webcam will give you just that extra reach that you need to get everybody in.

A swivel setup. If it's possible, you can consider using a webcam on a swivel mount or something that can rotate. This will allow for a dynamic camera angle and can be operated by someone that you designate as a camera person. This person can adjust the camera. They can focus on different speakers, at different times or different areas of the room as needed.

Some people have also had multicam setups. For the most professional setup, a multicamera arrangement with a switcher can be used. This allows you to just switch between different camera angles, you know, similar to a TV show or movie where you're just switching between video feeds to whoever's speaking at a time. You can have it on the whole head table or individual head table members, and then some people usually point the second one towards their q and a microphone. So when someone's coming up to ask a question, they can use the switcher and switch to one of them.

 

A projector or a TV. So this is for displaying presentations. A projector or a large TV screen, it's kind of essential for displaying slides, presentations, and reports to the people who are attending in person. This setup ensures that everyone in the room can see the contents clearly, you know, whether it's, for an AGM, you'll have an auditor's report, a board presentation, or any other visual material that you wanna share for your meeting.

It also gives you a window into the virtual attendee view. So your projector or TV, will allow people who are in person to see the virtual attendees as well as fostering a more inclusive environment because you'll feel as if people who are attending virtual are kinda there with you in person. This way, everyone's gonna feel connected regardless of what platform they're joining on. It also gives you the exact view  to what your virtual attendees are seeing, because what they're seeing being shared on the screen is exactly what your in-person attendees will be seeing.

And your microphone or microphones, this is, of course, crucial for clear audio for your virtual attendees. The microphone is crucial ensuring that every speaker at the head table can be clearly heard by the virtual attendees. You could either have a central microphone in the middle of the head table, or you can have one that's passed around between people as they're speaking. I've also seen setups where they have an individual microphone for everyone at the head table.

Without clear audio, it becomes challenging for remote participants to stay engaged and understand the discussion. Another option for microphones is having a wireless microphone. Wireless microphones are a bit more ideal, as they provide the flexibility of being able to be moved around easier.

Making sure everyone can be heard by simply passing it around. During the q and a, you can pass it to anyone who's asking a question so that they can be heard as well through for the virtual attendees. They reduce clutter of cables and allow for more natural interactions with people.

 If you do have only a single microphone setup, you don't have access to a wireless microphone or multiple microphones, it's still possible to manage an effective communication, channel. In this case, just make sure that your chairperson or you have someone at the head table repeat questions that are asked from the audience for the benefit of your virtual attendees.

This ensures that no information is gonna be lost and that everyone stays on the same page.

And by following these three simple, you know, technical requirement guidelines, you can create a seamless and professional hybrid meeting experience, you know, clear video and audio along with an effective way to visually display everything you need for both audiences are the foundation of engaging and a productive hybrid meeting.

So let's move on to the next slide here, which is, best practices for ensuring a smooth meeting. We're gonna go into three aspects here of hosting successful hybrid meetings, which is setting clear expectations, managing time efficiently, and preparing in advance.

So for setting clear expectations, it's essential to outline roles and responsibilities. This is clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of all of your participants, especially those who are gonna be managing the technology aspect of the meeting.

You can assign specific tasks to individuals such as moderating, moderator for both in in person and a moderator for both the fist the sorry, the virtual aspect of the meeting. You can assign specific tasks to individuals, similar to what we were saying earlier with the camera person, And you can have a tech support person who is there just in case anything happens. You know, like, maybe a speaker gets disconnected or something like that. Somebody who knows how everything in the room has been set up so so that if anything goes wrong, you'll have someone there who knows how to fix it. When everyone knows their roles, you'll find that it helps the meeting run, you know, more smoothly and efficiently.

Managing time efficiently. So you wanna start and end your meeting on time, of course. You wanna respect everyone's time by starting and ending your meeting as scheduled. Punctuality, you know, not only is important, but it sets a professional tone and it shows that you value the time of all of your attendees. It helps maintain a positive reputation. It'll encourage attendance for your future meetings.

 You don't want people who, you know, show up late to your meeting because they know that your meetings always start fifteen minutes late or anything like that. You wanna be punctual so everyone knows they need to be there on time if they don't wanna miss anything. Sticking to your agenda. You wanna create a detailed agenda and share with your participants before the meeting. I know for a lot of our AGM clients here, you already do that.

During the meeting, follow the agenda closely and perhaps even allocate specific time slots for each topic. I've seen that done before. It doesn't hurt to do that because if you finish earlier, then you've saved more time, and you have longer you have a longer period allocated for your q and a portion of your meeting, which is what most of your owners want to get to anyways. This will help keep the meeting focused and ensures all important points are covered without running over time. If your discussions go off track, gently steer them back to the agenda to maintain your efficiency.

And the last point here is to prepare in advance. So, of course, this means test all of your technology. You wanna test all of your technological components. This includes your audio, your video, and your Internet connection well before the meeting. You wanna ensure that the virtual platform is functioning correctly and that everyone who can and that everyone can join without issue.

This preemptive check, of course, avoids any technical glitches during the meeting. And when you're checking this, I strongly suggest you do your technological check-in the same room that you're going to have your meeting in just so you know the exact setup that everything needs to be.

 Arrange your in-person meeting room. So you wanna set the physical meeting space, you know, for optimal visibility and sound. If you plan on having your webcam pointed to the audience, you wanna set up your seating arrangements so that it can clearly capture everybody.

You wanna position it at an angle so that you capture your head table effectively as well as well if you have a speaker stand. For more of a pro tip or an advanced tip, you can also consider the lighting so that you're ensuring that faces are well lit and visible on camera. And the last thing here is that you wanna ensure clear audio. So test the placement of your microphones and speakers so that you avoid feedback and that you can ensure clear audio for both the in person and virtual attendees. This usually means that you want your speed your microphone, sorry, to be behind your speakers so that your speakers are not giving you a feedback loop into the mic. You wanna check that your sound levels are balanced and that it's not too loud for the in person people. You also wanna check the vice versa of that so that your microphone is not too loud for your virtual attendees.

Next, we'll move on to the strategies to boost participation. So ensuring that everyone feels included in the meeting, of course, regardless of how they're attending the meeting is crucial for your successful hybrid meeting. And we're gonna go over some strategies here to do so. So the first one is we want to use interactive tools. So you can use tools like polls, q and a sessions, and that you can use the chat to engage virtual attendees.

These allow you to gather, of course, real time feedback, you know, answer any questions quickly, and you can ensure that everyone's voice is heard and that they feel as if they're part of the meeting. You want to encourage active involvement. So encourage in person attendees to participate in the same way as virtual attendees.

This can be done by having people actually raise their hand physically in person or lining up for a q and a session during the meeting. Of course, your virtual participants are virtually raising their hand. And luckily, Zoom is a platform that when people raise their hand, it puts them in order already. So it's theoretically like they're lined up.

Pose direct questions to participants to encourage their input. By addressing individuals specifically, you can make them feel valued. You make them feel more likely to contribute. And the last point is we wanna leverage our technology. So having clear visuals, making sure that all the slides and screen shares are viewable clearly by both your in person and your virtual attendees.

This will ensure that everyone can follow along with the content, you know, whether it's a financial statement or a proposed design change. You know, maybe you're voting on colors for a hallway renovation or something like that. You want everyone to be able to clearly see it so that everyone can participate on that.

Next, we'll move on to managing, q and a effectively. So this typically is the most important part of a hybrid meeting, Managing the flow of questions and ensuring clear communication are a vital are vital to the success of hybrid meetings. So we're gonna go over how we can do that. Appointing separate moderators. So as I said earlier, it's a great strategy to have a moderator for the in-person portion of the meeting and the virtual portion of the meeting.

Your in person monitor, is responsible for facilitating the q and a session among the in person attendees. They can do this by having the attendees line up at the microphone or by remembering the order that they raise their hands. When it's someone's turn, the moderator can either give them the microphone to ask their question, or they can just have them ask their question, and it can be repeated by the head table if you don't have a microphone that you can offer them. This will help maintain order and ensures that everyone gets a fair chance to participate.

Your virtual moderator is gonna handle the questions from all your online participants. So, typically, after the in person moderator's taken a few questions, they can do a quick check-in with the virtual moderator. They can say, hey. Do we have any virtual questions? And then the virtual moderator will then see if there's any hands raised from the virtual audience. They will do this essentially the same way. They'll unmute people in the order they have their hands up, or they can read the chat or the q and a for questions, and they can just read it out loud. And because the virtual moderator is obviously connected to speakers, they're already being heard by anyone, so we don't have to worry about a microphone issue with them.

So we wanna encourage concise and clear communication between everybody in the meeting. So concise speaking is a big point when it comes to q and a sessions. You want to remind your participants to keep their speaking time brief because we want to ensure that everybody has a chance to speak. This is particularly important in a hybrid setting where time management is really crucial. Encourage your participants to get to the point quickly and avoid long winded explanations before a question.

Muting virtual participants. So this is more for the virtual moderator. When a virtual attendee is asking a question, you wanna ensure that they're muted again afterwards to prevent any background noise from leaking into the meeting after their question is asked, and repeating questions. Of course, if there is no separate microphone for the in-person audience, ensure you have someone at the head table or maybe your chairperson or whoever's answering the question. Repeat the question from your in-person attendee for the benefit of your virtual participants.

This will ensure that everyone is on the same page, and virtual attendees can follow the conversation without missing any details.

 

So by appointing, you know, your separate moderators for in person and virtual, encouraging concise communication, and managing questions effectively, you can create a smooth and inclusive hybrid meeting experience. These practices should help you maintain order and ensure everyone's voice is heard while keeping the meeting running efficiently. 

Thank you very much, Richard. Here on this slide, we have a hybrid meeting checklist. Just wanted to highlight a few important points here to keep in mind for hybrid meetings. So providing proper notice of the meeting, sending an email or physical notice with a link and access instructions.

We also want to, you know, govern by the same procedures and rules that apply to the in-person meetings. Next, using a platform like Condo Control that makes it easy for members to join, participate, and view whatever the in-person attendees can see. And then we also have, you know, recording minutes during the meeting. These minutes must be added to the association's records and may also need to be distributed to the rest of the board. And then ensure that only authorized participants can access the meeting. So hosts must be able to verify the identities of participants before allowing them in.

Also, the owners should have the ability to listen to the meeting, you know, follow the agenda, and speak if appropriate and encourage you know, really encourage participants to turn their cameras on for meetings. This, you know, tends to help create a greater sense of community and engagement.

Next here, we wanted to include some success stories from some of our clients that have used our Condo Control hybrid meeting service.

So we have from Brunilda, a property manager at the Met Condos in Toronto. She says, I am the manager at 2 Carlton, and I would like to share my experience with hybrid meetings using Condo Control. It was an excellent experience with outstanding service and full support throughout the entire meeting. Not only did we receive five star service, but the pricing was also competitive.I highly recommend Condo Control to all my colleagues. 

So, next, we also have a testimonial from Heather Francis, the senior property manager at GPM who used our hybrid meeting service. And she says, as a property manager, I was looking for a third party to best facilitate the annual general meeting using a hybrid solution. The team at Condo Control met the challenge and created a seamless in person and online hybrid environment that was beneficial to all owners who participated. Richard Ramrattan provided the necessary technical expertise to ensure sound quality was maximized and there was a balance to recognize in person and online attendees for questions and comments.

Using Condo Control ensured I was able to focus on the owners, the board, and holding elections. I will look forward to coordinating with Condo Control for any future hybrid owner meetings. So if you are interested in learning more about our hybrid meeting service as a client of Condo Control, please do reach out to your customer success manager.

So that, sums up the presentation component. As we wrap it up, I just wanted to review some of the key takeaways. So there are multiple benefits to holding hybrid form meetings including the enhanced flexibility and the opportunity for community engagement. So participants have the opportunity to choose to either attend from the comfort of their homes, and they can even, cast ballots using their computers or phones or if they want to attend, in person and see their community members.

As I said, associations are also more likely to reach quorum when they give owners the option to attend in person or virtually.

Our next point here about planning early. So it is suggested that you do you choose to go forward with the hybrid meeting, that you start planning early, including reserving that in person meeting room. And, as we said, in person and virtual attendees should have the same meeting experience where they have the equal opportunity to ask questions, participate in elections, and other meeting activities.

And the meeting minutes should account for both the in person and virtual attendee conversations. And then lastly, check your tech. So ensure that technical support is readily available. Or if you do have Condo Control, consider our hybrid meeting service to assist with the full technical aspects.

And associations that are new to hybrid meetings, they may also consider hiring a moderator to guide them through the process. So with the right platform and adequate planning, hybrid meetings can be very much a viable option for any condo or HOA community looking to provide their owners flexibility at their next upcoming meeting or AGM.

Before we get into the question period, I wanted to just let everyone know in the audience of our next webinar in on August 28th is on the topic of benefits of integrating software and hardware solutions.

And to register, you can go to events dot condocontrol.com. And I think Richard also has provided a link to the registration in the chat. So, that does conclude our presentation component. Thank you so much, Richard, for being our guest speaker. We will now start the q and a session. So if you do have any questions, please submit them in the q and a function at the bottom of your screen.

 So let's get started. First one I see here, is how do you collect responses from both groups and present merge results to both groups? For an example, poll results, type of questions and answers, and most importantly, votes.

So when when it comes to things like voting and you have an in person audience and a virtual audience, essentially, your two moderators will work together. Your virtual moderator will be collecting the votes or poll results online, and they will communicate that with your in person moderator or your in person scrutineers and who would then add that total to their in person count.

A virtual moderator will usually have the results first because it's instantaneous, whereas your virtual moderator will have to do some manual counting or your scrutineers will have to do some manual counting. So it's usually better to just get your virtual numbers first and then just add it to the totals of your in person ones.

The next question is, what would the cost be to create a perfect hybrid for a condominium corporation? This is a bit of a hard one to answer because it's different. It's going to be a different cost for every single condominium. This depends on your meeting space, your meeting room, if you have suitable Wi Fi, if you need to rent out a space. You know, say you don't have a common elements area where you can host your meeting, you might have to rent a space, you know, at a community center next door.

It also depends on if you're going with third party providers to help with your tech setup or if you have tech savvy, you know, residents in your building who can help with the setup. So there's no one answer that'll fit everybody here, but it goes on a case by case basis.

How much for Condo Control hybrid meeting service? Rebecca, I believe we are not discussing that during this meeting, but we can send information to some people afterwards.

That's correct. Yes. We can follow-up, after any, we can send information directly in the post-webinar email.

 Any recommendations when you have people with vision or hearing impairments? My recommendation for that is if you have anything that's going to be shared on the screen, you can have, of course, larger text. Or if you have any videos or anything to share like that, you can, you can turn on closed captioning. So if someone's joining virtually, Zoom actually has the option to turn closed captioning on within Zoom, so that's not even something you have to manually do yourself. But if you're sharing any videos or anything like that, if you have closed captioning, it will help with hearing impaired people.

How's the in person voting results merge into the online voting? So this was kind of answered already. You'll just have your online moderator work with your in-person moderator or scrutineers, and they will combine their results together.

Is it possible to host a mock AGM hybrid meeting in order to test equipment? Yep. That is possible. It's essentially just setting up any Zoom meeting in a room, and having somebody join that meeting, you know, virtually. They can just be right outside the room if you wanted to. And then you would test your audio that way, and that one person that you're testing with outside of the room can will essentially have the experience of everyone who attends virtually. So it's a quick and easy way to test the room, prior to a meeting.

What is your experience with feedback from in person attendees that also log in to the online session? Is there any issue here? We use an electronic voting system. 

So if you have people who are in person and they're joining online as well, for them to not cause any feedback during the meeting, you'll need them to not join the audio on the virtual side. So if they're on an iPad and they join the Zoom meeting, you just want them to make sure they don't join audio so that you don't get that echoing sound.

Best practice to verify virtual participants? So if you are using a service, you know, like Condo Control, our virtual participants can only join through a unique link that we email to them. So that is how we verify. It sends only to the email on file. It doesn't go to anybody else. If somebody else has it, then it's because that person forwarded it to them.

Everything else here we have is related to our cost.

How do you maximize bandwidth and avoid screen freezing? Of course, this is entirely dependent on your Internet connection in the room that you're having your hybrid meeting in. We actually recommend having at least five hundred megabits per second, because you are uploading a whole video and audio feed constantly to everyone that's in attendance. And, of course, you are technically downloading everything you're seeing from the virtual side as well.

Can you provide an overview as to specific services that the CC team can provide to help post meetings?

Sure. We do provide the audio and video equipment. That is something we can offer. We can have it shipped or set up for you. We also do the moderation. We can do virtual moderation, as a separate service if you wanna set up your in person part yourself. And we can also help with your voting in advance and voting during the meeting as well.

How do you handle two virtual owners attending together in their apartment?

Through our system, at least, if two owners are joined through the same, through the link that's used for their apartment, only one of their votes will count, so it's totally fine if two of them are attending the meeting. It would be essentially the same thing as if one of them were attending the meeting and they were both watching it on the same screen.

So there's no negative negative effects to having two people join from the same unit.

Do you provide the necessary equipment, or does the corporation need to have its own? It's either way. We can offer to send you or set up the equipment at your workspace if you'd like or if you have it or if you have it yourself, any of the equipment that I described earlier today, you can hundred percent set that up, and we can help you with moderating the virtual aspect of your meeting.

 

Do your scrutineers check that all proxies are valid? How are the votes from the proxies and votes from the in person meeting tallied up? So for the in person scrutineers, they would have to check that all proxies are valid. Usually, the PM would be there to help them with that. And for the online portion, all of them are because they're also sent out through our unique link on Condo Control, and only the unit owner would be able to cast theirs in. And it does only count one per unit as well.

But the problem is how do you count the votes if both owners are from one unit? So if two people are from one unit and they're joined virtually and they vote, only the latest vote will count. So even if one owner votes first, the second owner, when they go in to vote, it will actually say that they're updating the vote for that unit.

Sorry. Clarification. If two owners join from separate apartments, join on one computer, how will this be validated?

Well, again, they'd be joining through that unique link. So if they open their meeting on one link, if they want to count for that second unit, they will have to open another tab for that other unit's link as well.

So if a neighbor wants to come over to someone's house and watch the meeting, they can do that. But if they wanna be able to vote, they will have to join through their unique links sent by Condo Control.

I do see a hand up. We're unable to answer questions through, with the if your hand is up, please do submit the questions into the q and a functionality. 

I'm not seeing any more questions. We'll just wait a moment to see if anybody else submits anything.

Yes. We cannot provide the cost at this time. We will follow-up with people after the webinar on the cost.

Richard, does the PM receive a copy of all proxies submitted?

 

Yeah. For the in person part of the meeting, they definitely should have a copy of all the proxies that have been submitted.

For the virtual part of the meeting, yes, they can also have it printed off, and they can keep a copy of that as well.

Any further questions from audience? How do you manage a tie vote?

So, typically, if this is for something like a board election, usually, there will be a runoff vote. So we'll vote again.

Sometimes if there's a tie, that could be, you know, including advanced votes and proxies and things like that. So if you do a runoff election, it's mostly gonna be people who are attending the meeting only that can participate in that, and that usually will break a tie.

I I would assume there's a dashboard where the PM can keep track of proxies and quorum. That's correct. If you are using Condo Control for your meeting, you do have a dashboard where you can keep track of every vote that's been submitted. You can see how many you have and how far away you are from reaching quorum.

How does it work if one person from a unit attends virtually and one person from the same unit attends in person and both vote? So the way this would work is, typically, if you're attending virtually and you've already submitted your vote, your PM will have a report of that. And when the person goes downstairs in person to register for the meeting, they would not get the ballot because they've already cast a vote.

Does the PM get a copy of the proxies that have been rejected and the reason they've been rejected? Typically, if a proxy is being rejected, it's been looked over by the PM already, so they would have all of the rejected proxies.

Any more questions?  Okay, Richard. Well, I think we will sum up, if no one else has any further questions, we're ending a bit early today.

So thank you everybody, for your questions. Let me just get back to there we go. If you do have any further questions, so please do send us an email at customersuccess@condo control.com.

We encourage you to visit our website at condocontrol.com as well, and we very much thank you for your participation in the q and a. So just after the Zoom meeting ends, a short survey will appear in your browser. So if you don't mind taking the time to fill this out, we would greatly appreciate any feedback.

 Thank you so much, everyone, and have a great day.