Feb 14th NW Broadcast

We broadcast our Stake Conference to 3 remote buildings. We have a satellite receiver at our Stake Center. We were able to receive the Salt Like content fine over the satellite system. We used the church internet broadcast system to send our local content to the remote building. about 45 minutes before we were to start, the webcaster portal completely failed. We had no view of the connections to the remote building. We were not able to even connect the remote buildings to the data stream.

We used an audio backup system to send the local content. The remotes were able to connect to either our broadcast or directly to the SLC URL at 30-40 minutes after the hour. From our point of view the Internet broadcast system is completely under powered and unable to carry the network traffic necessary to support such conferences. We would like to see this addressed before our next conference in April.

Geoff Williams
Vancouver East Stake
Technology Specialist

Similar catastrophic failure.
We broadcast from our stake center receiving via satellite and everything worked fine until 9:50am pacific where our remote buildings encountered looping and buffering. This escalated by 10:10am to complete failure of streams and inability to even to connect to the lds webcast portal over browser. We were forced to triage in a similar fashion, the only difference was we fired up the old windows media meetinghouse webcaster by 11am. Needless to say, confidence in local church technology has taken a pretty big hit in our stake today, and I pray for inspired revelation on future bandwidth and cpu cycle capacity when all stakes within a region are encouraged to use the same broadcasting portal at the same time.

Matt Cardoza
Stake Clerk
Spokane Washington North Stake

I guess I'm not surprised. The last big hit was on a regional conference. CHQ didn't anticipate so many stakes streaming the local portion. There really is no requirement to do so. So along comes a bi-regional conference....

Our Stake Tech Specialists (and judging by the load failure, those of other stakes as well) were advised by global support to stream the satellite feed to our Internet stream receiving meeting houses. They were advised this when they called to receive the regional broadcast url to provide to our non-satellite/internet only chapels.

MCardoza wrote:Our Stake Tech Specialists (and judging by the load failure, those of other stakes as well) were advised by global support to stream the satellite feed to our Internet stream receiving meeting houses. They were advised this when they called to receive the regional broadcast url to provide to our non-satellite/internet only chapels.

That's funny. Because the "Stake Conference Broadcast Instructions for Stake Presidents" specifically said to use the private URL to stream from SLC and NOT to stream from one location to another.

russellhltn wrote:[T]he "Stake Conference Broadcast Instructions for Stake Presidents" specifically said to use the private URL to stream from SLC and NOT to stream from one location to another.

That works just fine for the portion of the stake conference that originates at Church headquarters.

This does not address the local portion of the stake conference that occurs during the first half hour, in which the stake president is expected to conduct the local portion of the stake conference, including the conducting of stake business and addressing the members of his stake.

If the Church is going to rely on the stake to provide a local portion of the stake conference, the local stake needs to be able to stream from the stake center to the other overflow meetinghouses in the stake to provide that portion of the conference.

Since this has happened twice now, I do not believe headquarters understands that a stake today in most cases is not able to put all of its members into the stake center in one location for a conference. They have forgotten that they no longer build meetinghouses large enough to house a complete stake, and they have forgotten that they have instructed stake presidents that meetinghouse-to-meetinghouse streaming is the Church-expected method to send a stake conference to the other buildings in the stake where members are attending the conference.

We fully expected that we would be able to stream our local half-hour portion of stake conference, and then switch to the URL from Church headquarters, as instructed, to stream the rest of the regional stake conference.

I do not believe headquarters realizes just how many stakes have to use meetinghouses that are not satellite capable for stake conference congregations. When everyone starts hitting the main URL for the regional portion of the conference and the servers are already tied up for the local portion, they dump the stake president.

It might not be a bad idea for the Church to survey the stakes participating in the next regional conference and find out just how many will need both a local meetinghouse-to-meetinghouse stream and the headquarters stream. They have been caught by surprise twice now. These conferences are too important to destroy because of lack of planning.

There is a link where the Church has asked us to complete a Broadcast Post Event Survey. I think it would be helpful if everyone involved in the regional conference (or any other broadcast or streaming event) would complete the survey as requested.

lajackson wrote:That works just fine for the portion of the stake conference that originates at Church headquarters.

This does not address the local portion of the stake conference that occurs during the first half hour, in which the stake president is expected to conduct the local portion of the stake conference, including the conducting of stake business and addressing the members of his stake.

The instructions gave latitude for a councilor or assigned high councilor to preside and conduct in each location. It further stated that Prayers, hymns, speakers, musical number, etc should be provided in each location.

As such, it appears that streaming between locations would be going against the provided instructions.

russellhltn wrote:The instructions gave latitude for a councilor or assigned high councilor to preside and conduct in each location. It further stated that Prayers, hymns, speakers, musical number, etc should be provided in each location.

Those are not the instructions I received. But if those are the correct instructions, (and I have reason to believe that they are), I would agree that we need to round up a bunch of choirs and deploy counselors and high councilors to run individual meetings during the first 30 minutes before the broadcast.

And in that case, local streaming would not be needed on regional stake conference Sunday. Meetinghouses without satellite equipment would just use the URL from Church headquarters.

Of note, when talking to the GSC the engineering team had spun down a significant portion of the servers for the weekend, totally underestimating the weekend demand. Once enough people called in and indicated an issue, the GSC called the engineering team who spun servers up and got the system up to where it needed to be. Of course, this was an hour into the conference.

We had stake conference last week and the system was awesome. The regional yesterday was....brutal.

jakerose wrote:Of note, when talking to the GSC the engineering team had spun down a significant portion of the servers for the weekend, totally underestimating the weekend demand. Once enough people called in and indicated an issue, the GSC called the engineering team who spun servers up and got the system up to where it needed to be.

I wonder how many stakes booked the event at least a week in advance as advised by Schedule an event. If a large number of stakes scheduled after the engineers looked at the expected load, that could create a major problem.

I don't know how much latitude the church has in spinning up more servers on short notice. I can see where someone might decide to discourage local streaming for regional conferences but allow it for stake conferences. It would minimize the peak demand. In the case of a regional conference, the difference in talks between the two methods would be just the short local talk.

jakerose wrote:Of note, when talking to the GSC the engineering team had spun down a significant portion of the servers for the weekend, totally underestimating the weekend demand.

It would seem to me that every stake which normally uses meetinghouse-to-meetinghouse broadcast for a normal stake conference would need to use the headquarters URL for a regional stake conference broadcast to those same meetinghouses away from the stake center. So I don't see the theory behind a reduced workload just because it is a regional conference.

Of course, there may be some other factors considered in their decision.

lajackson wrote:It would seem to me that every stake which normally uses meetinghouse-to-meetinghouse broadcast for a normal stake conference would need to use the headquarters URL for a regional stake conference broadcast to those same meetinghouses away from the stake center. So I don't see the theory behind a reduced workload just because it is a regional conference.

I suspect they are different systems. Since it's cloud-based, it doesn't stress the church network like the older system did.

russellhltn wrote:I suspect they are different systems. Since it's cloud-based, it doesn't stress the church network like the older system did.

The new meetinghouse-to-meetinghouse system is no longer on Church servers. I think they spool up a commercial server farm for the weekend based on how many reservations are made by stakes holding conferences. So m-to-m is also cloud-based now.

Yes, the new m2m is cloud-based. I'm not sure what they're using for direct from CHQ streaming. It may not be using the same severs. So there was an expected reduction in server workload for m2m.

lajackson wrote:

russellhltn wrote:The instructions gave latitude for a councilor or assigned high councilor to preside and conduct in each location. It further stated that Prayers, hymns, speakers, musical number, etc should be provided in each location.

Those are not the instructions I received. But if those are the correct instructions, (and I have reason to believe that they are), I would agree that we need to round up a bunch of choirs and deploy counselors and high councilors to run individual meetings during the first 30 minutes before the broadcast.

And in that case, local streaming would not be needed on regional stake conference Sunday. Meetinghouses without satellite equipment would just use the URL from Church headquarters.

Our stake had a presidency member presiding at each of 3 locations. Each location had their own hymns, prayers, choirs and speakers for the local portions of the meeting. The stake center received the broadcast via satellite transmission and the other 2 buildings directly through the Internet stream provided by HQ. I had a conference call set up for audio backup, with the audio from the satellite transmission injected, but it did not become necessary for the remote locations to use it. I instructed the remote locations to have their computers connected to the stream by 9:30, 1 hour before the meeting broadcast began. They never experienced any problems. On the other hand, the satellite transmission had some issues with the video. Each time, the video would stutter for several seconds and then go black for about a second and then go back to normal. The audio didn't seem to be affected. This happened about 10 times. I don't know if this was due to an issue with our soon-to-be-replaced receiver or if it was the transmission.

russellhltn wrote:

MCardoza wrote:Our Stake Tech Specialists (and judging by the load failure, those of other stakes as well) were advised by global support to stream the satellite feed to our Internet stream receiving meeting houses. They were advised this when they called to receive the regional broadcast url to provide to our non-satellite/internet only chapels.

That's funny. Because the "Stake Conference Broadcast Instructions for Stake Presidents" specifically said to use the private URL to stream from SLC and NOT to stream from one location to another.

We were definitely told not to stream the satellite broadcast to other buildings. We were given a specific URL so remote units without a satellite connection could watch the broadcast.

I agree totally with your remarks. Our stake tried to do a local webcast for the first 30 minutes (a couple of units are 3-4 hour drive from the Stake Center) and it completely failed. I was not expecting that. I was so confident going in based on our last experience that I did not have an audio backup plan since it was only 25-30 minutes in total. Very embarrassing to have 8 remote meetinghouses with nothing to listen to for 30 minutes. Less learned about audio backup.

danpass wrote:The stake center received the broadcast via satellite transmission and the other 2 buildings directly through the Internet stream provided by HQ. ... They never experienced any problems.

Which certainly suggests that whatever crippled the webcast system, didn't affect the CHQ 2 MH system. So there's some separation of resources.

bspittle wrote:Very embarrassing to have 8 remote meetinghouses with nothing to listen to for 30 minutes.

As it turns out from having now read the actual instructions, they should have had one of the stake president's counselors, or a high councilor to listen to, along with their own music, prayers, and other local programming as directed by the stake president.

Two posts before yours, danpass explains how wonderful it all works when the proper directions are followed.

Our Stake is not an average Utah Stake and the travel distances make it important for us to use the webcast technology for all Stake Conferences, especially those in the winter. I've confirmed that the intent of the instructions was not to preclude a webcast. Most units in our stake are a 1.5-2 hour drive to the Stake Center. For such a short meeting, the webcast was considered by the Stake Presidency as an ideal solution as there are 13 wards and branches. We did book the event well ahead of time so counted on the resources being available.

bspittle wrote:I've confirmed that the intent of the instructions was not to preclude a webcast.

Can you elaborate on how it was confirmed? There was nothing in the instructions that would preclude holding meetings simultaneously across the stake in different buildings - including buildings without satellite. But I saw the instructions as pointing stake to not try and webcast.

Note that the instructions I'm referring to were found in "Stake Conference Broadcast Instruction§ for Stake Presidents". It is only hinted at in the "Stake Conference Broadcast Timeline", and not mentioned at all in "Satellite Equipment Operator Instructions".

Let me try to clear the water about regional conferences.

The first 30 minutes of the regional conference, the stakes are to use the webcasting system to broadcast their local business to any remote buildings.
(**NOTE** We were directed to use the webcasting system, even though it was not designed to facilitate this many events that regional events carries. It is like trying to put a 2 inch diameter peg into a 1 inch diameter hole. I guess if you pound hard enough the peg will eventually to in the hole.....with considerable damage to the peg or the hole. Please know that we are working on making the hole bigger, but it means rethinking and revamping the system. It is going to take time. Please have patience. I will post on another thread some work-arounds if one experiences problems.)

The second part of the regional conference is broadcasted from a single place. This broadcast DOES NOT USE the webcasting system. It is an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT system and is in NO WAY CONNECTED with webcasting. A link to this broadcast could be obtained by calling the GSC (Global Service Center). If one experiences problems with this part of the conference, it is not the webcasting system. Please check your internet connections at the receive sites.

These instructions were sent out to the stake presidencies that were involved in the regional conferences.

For all those who experienced problems with the second part of the conference and using internet streaming, please check your internet connections.
For those who experienced problems with the first 30 minutes, I apologize. Please see the above note. I will also post on a separate thread some work-arounds/tricks that could be used to get around problems.

rannthal wrote:Let me try to clear the water about regional conferences.

Thank you for your clarifications. Please continue to clarify if you are able.

rannthal wrote:The first 30 minutes of the regional conference, the stakes are to use the webcasting system to broadcast their local business to any remote buildings.

This conflicts with the instructions stake presidents received concerning the local portion of the broadcast, although granted, many stakes tried to stream anyway.

The instructions to stake presidents, if the conference was held in multiple locations, were that a counselor in the stake presidency or an assigned high councilor "will preside and conduct" in each location in order to handle the local stake business. Additionally, prayers, hymns, speakers, musical numbers, prelude and postlude music should be provided "in each location." Based on those instructions, I do not envision the need for a local stream, as nice as it would be.

rannthal wrote:The second part of the regional conference is broadcasted from a single place. This broadcast DOES NOT USE the webcasting system. It is an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT system and is in NO WAY CONNECTED with webcasting.

Good to know and clarifies one of the earlier questions. Thanks.

rannthal wrote:These instructions were sent out to the stake presidencies that were involved in the regional conferences.

Except that as I mentioned, stake presidents were not instructed to stream the first 30 minutes of the local portion of the conference.

rannthal wrote:For those who experienced problems with the first 30 minutes, I apologize. Please see the above note. I will also post on a separate thread some work-arounds/tricks that could be used to get around problems.

I am all in favor of being able to stream the first 30 minutes of the conference. I say that personally, and realize full well that it conflicts with the current direction from headquarters regarding regional conferences. Therefore, I feel I may need to speedily repent.

And perhaps this is the clarification that really needs to be sent out to stake leaders for the next regional conference.

Another suggestion I have is that if the reservations are going to overtax the local system, perhaps there is a way that they can be rejected and not approved. Or perhaps a reservation would only be accepted for a stake that was not a part of the regional conference.

If the reservation is not accepted, someone such as bspittle would not have been in the pickle of finding out at the last minute that he could not get the local conference to his 13th location (and any others to which a high councilor was not able to travel that morning). And he could have petitioned for a special exemption to obtain a valid reservation based on the circumstances of his particular stake.

Webcasting the local 30 minute session did not conflict with "current direction from headquarters". The only stipulation was not webcasting the main session to other locations, which each building could pick up either by Satellite or internet connection for those location without a satellite receiver.

bspittle wrote:Webcasting the local 30 minute session did not conflict with "current direction from headquarters". The only stipulation was not webcasting the main session to other locations, which each building could pick up either by Satellite or internet connection for those location without a satellite receiver.

Perhaps because of your location you received different instruction from headquarters. That is entirely possible. The directions we received said the stake "will" have local meetings presided over by stake presidency and high council, with local music, speakers, prayers, and everything else.

Again, though, you have said that you received different or additional direction. That's fine. And you have made an excellent case for needing to broadcast the local portion of the conference, which I addressed in my post.

I am not saying you did anything wrong. I am only going with what I know. You have stated that you received further light and knowledge on the matter which allowed you to do what you did. There are others in your situation (and worse) who would like to have access to the source of your additional information, if possible.

Furthermore, if your stake president made the decision to do it, he has the keys and I would fully support him, even if the local broadcast system didn't.

bspittle wrote:Webcasting the local 30 minute session did not conflict with "current direction from headquarters".

Let's just say that is not what I'm seeing in the second paragraph under "Presiding" in written communication I got. I assume everyone got the same instructions - maybe the different areas got different instructions.

rannthal wrote:For all those who experienced problems with the second part of the conference and using internet streaming, please check your internet connections.
For those who experienced problems with the first 30 minutes, I apologize. Please see the above note. I will also post on a separate thread some work-arounds/tricks that could be used to get around problems.

Instead of having to rely on the internet, an easy solution could be recording the second part of conference a month in advanced, and then stakes simply download the video before conference, or play a DVD if they can get that, and just press play after the first 30 minutes of conference is up! No internet needed! No internet connection issues!

Is this broadcast going to be online for viewing later on?

showseason wrote:Is this broadcast going to be online for viewing later on?

If it is, that would be a first. I've not heard of any regional or stake conference broadcast being made available.

Is this going to broadcast online later?

showseason wrote:Is this going to broadcast online later?

I've never seen that happen.

showseason wrote:Is this going to broadcast online later?

See this post in another thread.

Does anyone have the link for the broadcast? Members in our stake are inquiring.

See the link in the post right before your post. It was on Youtube for a very short time...then quickly got changed to private.