Thursday, May 7, 2015


I have a webinar for a number of clients happening today at 4 PM. I normally use GoToMeeting. Works well. I've really wanted to force myself to learn and use HaA because I use Google Apps all the time for everything else. In fact my webinar is about using Google Drive. 

Here is my dilemma. 

I created an HoA event and invited a number of clients. 

1. Yet when I do a few practice rounds (test) it seems confusing for the end user. 

2. I had an employee try it out. I clicked to start the Broadcast and waited for him to join. He could not join until I started recording. 

3. Also it wanted me to invite people to join, when I already did this in my initial invitation. These seemed confusing to end user.

4. When my employee final did see me (once I went "on air) he said there was a real delay when viewing my screen. I had just tested GoToMeeting a few minutes before this and the screen share was perfect. Most of the time I've tried HOA, there is a delay for sharing a screen. I've done several test with a hardwired Internet connect and there is still a delay. If someone pops into an HoA, they are delayed and not seeing me live.

So I guess my question is...1) how can I make sure it is easy for people to join my meeting on Thursday when it is time and 2) How can I make sure there is no delay in showing my screen. 3) How do folks joining the call show their faces (video). 4) When creating the time, for a 45 minute webinar, it creates a 4 hour and 45 minute duration. I've tried a dozen times to make the webinar 45 minutes.

7 comments:

  1. David Chism,
    The first thing is exactly how did you set up the HOA?
    1). Did you create a SHOAE ( Scheduled Hangout On Air Event) or did you create a traditional event linked to a YouTube Video?

    2.) The initial invitation is only for people to watch the event and they can only watch after you start broadcasting.

    3.) You can only invite people to be in the video filmstrip after you start the HOA (which is NOT the same as starting the broadcast).

    As for the delay for those watching- that is the nature of the beast. There is no delay for those in the filmstrip.

    About setting the time - depending on which way you set it up you simply specify a start time and an end time. It should be noted that those times don't actually control when the HOA starts and stops- that is determined by the host actually hitting the start and stop buttons.

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  2. Perfect...thank you. You've pretty much answered my questions. Andrew Hatchett 

    I used the HoA event to invite customers. So it puts it on their calendars. This is how I do it with GoToMeeting too. They are the ones more confused...and I cannot have that happen. 

    I would like those core customers to be able to see this live with NO delay. So to do that, what you are saying is I need to invite them again before I start the broadcast so they can be in the filmstrip. Is this correct?

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  3. One more thing...if I do an event and invite people... it is saying the event is private to those people. How do I make it open and/or closed to the public?

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  4. Public vs. Private.
    When you first set up the HOA, in the invite field type public and then your circle, community, etc. If you do not put "Public" in that field then it will be classified as a private event.

    Remember- there is a maximum of 10 people (including host) allowed in the film strip, so yes- to have NO delay you need to get them into the filmstrip.

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  5. Expanding a bit on the delay/lag subject brought by David Chism to complete Andrew Hatchett 's answer.
    For sure there is the lag, but does it really matter? I think its less an issue than it may appear.
    Did you know that there is a lag on TV live broadcasts too? It's a minimum of 7 secs sometimes up to 30 secs. As viewers we never notice it. Same thing for HOA (or BHOA) viewers. Viewers and speakers are just in 2 time references and as long as you don't move from one to another, it's not perceivable.
    BTW, all live streaming systems (HOA, BHOA, LiveStream, Ustream,...) have a lag, but they are scalable unlike video-conferencing where there is no lag, but the # of attendees is limited. Two different technical architectures.
    Unless you do the test that you did which is checking by a PARTICIPANT or a HOST what a VIEWER is seeing in real time, you don't really notice it. The only moment in a BHOA that the lag can INDIRECTLY be noticed (if you are a good observer) is through the unified chat or SHARED CONTENT which are both lag-less. Same thing in a HOA with viewers comments. With some experience as a host, there a couple best practices to apply to avoid the perception by attendees.

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  6. David Chism, good to see you here in the U2U-Live community!

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  7. Thank you! Good to be here John Brown

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