What solutions there are despite the ban on assemblies
Meetings are not allowed to take place and yet they have to. Livestream is the solution that has established itself in all areas since summer 2020 at the latest. Livestream has not only become socially acceptable, but is developing its full communication power. This is also reflected by our customers. These include the Stadtsparkasse München and the Bavarian State Ministry for Family, Labour and Social Affairs.
More participants in the livestream than on site
It is difficult to deduce that Corona also has something positive, especially in the field of human resources. Nevertheless, the switch from “on-site staff meetings” to online formats has led to more participation and higher viewer numbers. Now that’s good news! Our clients report that in many cases 50% more viewers are tuned in online than were present at on-site events – i.e. before 2020.
This means that messages and topics can be communicated better than before. Less gossip, more direct communication despite distance. Sounds like a paradox, but it’s not!
Overcoming: Technical hurdles in livestreaming staff meetings
During the Corona pandemic, ways of working and workplace locations kept changing. We distinguish:
– All employees in the home office with ‘private end devices’ or ‘open end devices’
– Employees in the home office connected via VPN
– All employees on site, e.g. in one or more buildings
– 50 / 50
– Who knows that?
In the following, we would like to go into the individual situations, as each of them poses completely different challenges when broadcasting a staff meeting as a livestream. In our article “Livestream staff meeting: Stadtsparkasse München and Ministry rely on Stream1” you will learn how two staff meetings took place as video broadcasts using concrete examples.
All employees in the home office with “private terminals” or “open terminals”.
This situation is actually “relatively” simple. We solve it like this: We transmit a livestream via the servers of our partner www.livestream-server.de. With a capacity of up to 20,000 viewer seats, we can thus answer all “typical” requests from our customers.
Possible problems: The “bottleneck” with this variant may be the poor internet connection in the home office. Otherwise, a smooth transmission can be expected here.
Employees in the home office connected via VPN
In this variant, all employees connect to their servers via VPN. The bottleneck is therefore the VPN server. A bandwidth of approx. 3 MBit/s is to be expected per video stream. Thus, with 100 employees, 300 Mbit/s would have to be made possible in the upload at the VPN server, since this provides the connections for the users in the home office.
If this is not possible on the part of the infrastructure, alternatives must be worked out. For example, a transmission WITHOUT VPN. We would then, as in case 1, host a website for your congregation and provide access for your users. Various levels of security are available for this.
It should therefore be considered in advance which traffic is to be expected via the VPN server and how we want to deal with it.
All staff on site, e.g. in one or more buildings.
In this case, we have a similar situation as in the “VPN” case. If we were to work with our partner www.livestream-server.de – i.e. the DSGVO-compliant servers in Nuremberg – the stream would be requested three times at 3 Mbit/s for 100 employees in one building. This means that the connection in the building would have to be at least 300 Mbit/s in order for each employee to receive the stream from this “external server” on their end device.
However, since in many cases this is also not expedient, we have established the following solutions:
Use of proxy servers for live streams:
Proxy servers are servers that are installed in a network, e.g. as “hardware”. They take on one task, for example: distribute content from “external” to “internal”.
Specifically, in the above example, the proxy server would take over the following task: The server pulls only 1x stream from the server and makes this stream available to the employees in the internal network. The advantages are obvious: the building’s internet connection is spared and only 3 Mbit/s is required for the external connection.
However, a fast network connection, e.g. with 4 Gbit in the internal network of our proxy server, is recommended.
With the proxy server, we can thus transmit the livestream indoors to many viewers at the same time without having to make a “big” technical effort.
Peer 2 Peer technology in the livestream:
Technically even more interesting than the “good old” proxy server is the distribution of the livestream with P2P software.
Advantage: It is not necessary to install a proxy server as hardware in the building. Nevertheless, one achieves a similar success or a saving of the internet connection.
“Disadvantage” or technical requirement: The network must allow access to our Peer 2 Peer server, so that all viewers become active both as downloaders of the stream and as uploaders for their colleagues. This may involve security settings in the browser as well as in the firewall.
Note: The setup may need more tuning and testing than with the proxy server.
50 / 50 staff on site, in the home office or from different locations
This is where it gets exciting. Either those responsible calculate and calculate precisely or we simply provide two variants. We have already done this for many clients. A selection button on an external page of the event allows the livestream to be transmitted via “Internal” or via “External”.
“Internal” means that we use the proxy server solution, “External” means that we work with an external livestream server.
In this way, we serve both groups well and yet the existing connection is sufficient.
Here, too, the peer-to-peer livestream solution is an exciting alternative. We don’t need a “switch” for the users to choose from, because the player that plays the stream does that itself. Either the player recognises that someone is watching from an internal network, just like some colleagues. Then the player organises its connections itself, becomes the uploader or downloader of the colleagues and thus saves bandwidth. The external viewer, on the other hand, because there is no second viewer in his network, will obtain the stream completely from the external server.
Thus, especially for large company networks and multiple locations, the Peer 2 Peer solution in live streaming is the new “non plus ultra”.
“Who knows?” where the employees are?
If you don’t know where your employees are, you might want to think about this in principle – but all joking aside. Here, Peer 2 Peer in livestream is the solution of the hour. As described in the point above, the Livestream Player takes over the distribution: Who sits where in which group? It doesn’t matter if there are 100 people at one location or only 5, as long as there is a medium-quality connection at the location, we transmit the livestreams reliably – and save bandwidth.
Livestream for staff meetings – anything is possible!
In summary, together with you and with good planning, as well as a considered transmission, we can reliably reach all staff – even at online meetings.
In addition to the considerations for the technical transmission, you should always ask yourself – with our help – the following questions:
– How does a meeting become attractive to viewers?
– Will there be speakers from the home office?
– Would pre-produced films help to make certain topics more understandable?
– Do different stages/locations/lectures/discussions bring a lot of variety in the images to keep attention high?
– Can belly bands and graphics in the stream help to increase the appeal?
– Do viewers participate in a chat and ask questions there?
– Which elements / topics should be addressed or shown and how?
– Should a poll be integrated where viewers can have a direct say?
– Is there a need for an anonymous yet secure election?
The possibilities for participation and increasing the attractiveness of the livestream at meetings are high. The higher number of viewers compared to “on-site events” speaks for itself.
We think that even after 2021 and after Corona and Pandemic, livestreaming of staff meetings will be more than an issue: They are a solution for good communication with all staff.
Let us advise you. Call us on 0049 89 41 41 453 10 089 41 41 453 10. and we will be happy to provide a livestream meeting to suit your requirements. And: So far we have found a good solution for all our customers!
