Policy and building to building transmission

Greetings


This is more a policy question than a technology question. First let me state that I’m a Branch president over a branch that covers an assisted living and a independent living complex. We have two buildings. The branch is kind of split between the two buildings with two sacrament meetings and two different Relief Societies. In the past we have carpooled members over to the stake center to attend stake conference. Our membership activity of both buildings has been on the rise which means that we are taking more and more people over all the time. We are also leaving people behind that cant travel, sit long, or whatever. Many of these members would enjoy conference also.

This time our stake conference is going to be presided over by the General Authorities and be broadcast to the stake center and one other building.

Two solutions have been suggested. The first is to send it to the two buildings, set up projectors in each of the meeting rooms and present it as though it were two meeting houses. This would mean buying more equipment to handle two more buildings.
The other suggestion would be to use the in-house Qwest TV system that would make it possible to send it into each members room. This is a system much like a hotel TV where you can go to a channel and see daily information like the restaurants available and such. The members would be able to turn on their TV to channel 50 and watch Stake conference in their room.

As you can see this is a question where technology is running a bit ahead of new policy.
Some of the policies that are in place now, prohibit recording General authorities, and cameras in the chapel however we are seeing exceptions to these policies with the video internet transmissions of conferences from building to building. I would really like to hear from other members of the forum your feelings of sending conference into the rooms or other solutions.
Thank you

There is indeed a policy not to record general authorities, but it doesn't sound like you are planning on recording (you are simply transmitting), so I don't see a problem there. You are really just proposing a building-to-building communication, which is just fine.

I don't see any problem with using the Qwest TV system, as long as it is restricted to the facility. After all, if you projected the broadcast on a screen in one of the rooms of the facility, any resident would be welcome to come watch. You're just making it easier for the residents to watch that same broadcast.

I think you're providing a wonderful service, and I would applaud anything you can do to make it easier for people in these challenging circumstances to participate in this conference.

I don't know of any prohibition, but I would use your contacts to find out if this is acceptable. I can't say that I've ever heard of Stake Conference being broadcast to the home.

Ground Rod wrote:As you can see this is a question where technology is running a bit ahead of new policy.
Some of the policies that are in place now, prohibit recording General authorities, and cameras in the chapel however we are seeing exceptions to these policies with the video internet transmissions of conferences from building to building. I would really like to hear from other members of the forum your feelings of sending conference into the rooms or other solutions.
Thank you

The policy section of the Meetinghouse Webcast FAQs includes the following question and answer:

Can meetinghouse webcasts be used to allow members who are physically unable to attendto view Stake Conference and other meetings?

Meetinghouse Webcast is intended to broadcast events from one building to other buildings. Allowing others to view the webcasts from locations other than Church buildings should be done only when unusual circumstances exist and stake and area leaders deem it necessary.

So approval by stake and area leaders would be required.

I see a potential problem with regard to using the in-house system to distribute the broadcast. You would not be able to guarantee compliance to the policy that the broadcast not be recorded. If you do seek approval to broadcast to these non-Church locations and make use of the Qwest system, your request should include a mention of this risk.

Obviously, these viewers could be advised of the policy and asked that they not record the broadcast. Perhaps that would be enough to offset any concerns the leaders might have.

danpass wrote:

Meetinghouse Webcast is intended to broadcast events from one building to other buildings. Allowing others to view the webcasts from locations other than Church buildings should be done only when unusual circumstances exist and stake and area leaders deem it necessary.

So approval by stake and area leaders would be required.

What is a "Church building"? Is it only a building which is owned by the Church? What about leases? What about buildings where Church meetings are regularly held?

I don't know definitive answers to those questions, but it does seem that a building where Church meetings are regularly held has the potential to meet the definition of "Church building." For care centers (particularly in areas with relatively high concentrations of Church members), meetings are usually held in the care center itself. In my opinion, that makes at least the room where meetings are regularly held into something equivalent to a "Church building."

So a broadcast to that same room should be within policy, with no additional approval necessary outside the stake. As for the possibility of recording, I do agree that it's a concern and so using the facility's TV system might well require additional approval.

The above is intended simply to be an alternate perspective. You should definitely bring the relevant policies for this particular request to the stake president so that he can decide what to do, and if additional approval is necessary.

I believe that you have received great council on this matter. There have been many situations already where stake conferences have been webcast to care facilities. For the ones that I have known about they have gathered them in one room and some have put up a projector and others have simply plugged a laptop into one of the facilities TV monitors to show the conference. Not much equipment needed for that solution. This way the record-ability was controlled.
Troy

Alan_Brown wrote:What is a "Church building"? Is it only a building which is owned by the Church? What about leases? What about buildings where Church meetings are regularly held?

I don't know definitive answers to those questions, but it does seem that a building where Church meetings are regularly held has the potential to meet the definition of "Church building." For care centers (particularly in areas with relatively high concentrations of Church members), meetings are usually held in the care center itself. In my opinion, that makes at least the room where meetings are regularly held into something equivalent to a "Church building."

So a broadcast to that same room should be within policy, with no additional approval necessary outside the stake. As for the possibility of recording, I do agree that it's a concern and so using the facilities TV system might well require additional approval.

I would tend to agree.

Personally, I'd want the permission of the visiting GA before trying to send it to memeber's rooms.

I think if the original poster was to ask around, I think he may find that he can borrow the needed projectors or at least rent them at a reasonable price to go with the first plan.

RussellHltn wrote:Personally, I'd want the permission of the visiting GA before trying to send it to member's rooms.

I'm sure Ground Rod is talking about the stake conference that is being broadcast widely in the SLC area on October 18. There is no visiting GA in this case; the broadcast originates from the Conference Center and is broadcast to many stakes.

danpass wrote:I see a potential problem with regard to using the in-house system to distribute the broadcast. You would not be able to guarantee compliance to the policy that the broadcast not be recorded.

With consideration and approval, I think this problem could be overcome.

I doubt that any of the TVs in the rooms have recording capability.

It should not be hard to monitor the distribution point of the building network to see that no recording is made.

Well I just wanted to report how our webcast stake conference turned out. We were able to
set-up our two buildings with laptops and projectors. We did have a slight problem with one of the buildings because of the bandwidth being lower because the management had switched ISP providers. They originally had Comcast but switched to Qwest. As a result we had some freeze up’s and we had to drop it down to a smaller picture. It was apparent that the video was lagging behind because when we reset it it jumped to another speaker that had already started. This happened in the other building that was doing a streaming webcast in the stake as well. Other than that we had a very happy group of members that were able to watch the conference.

In one of the posts I read where someone discussed seeing if the ISP would upgrade the service to a building, for a month, when they wanted to do a webcast. Did anyone find out if this was possible to do?