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As well being based at APU Central Campus in Chelmsford, Ultralab has a growing team of remote workers distributed across the UK. who need to be able to interact with the central staff at team meetings, development sessions and showcase events.

Reliance on telephone conferencing was unsatisfactory for several reasons; the costs of dialling into a central system, the meeting room telephone could not pick up sound from the whole room, the lack of visual stimulus; remote workers were unable to gauge the tone of a meeting, and would miss out on the subtleties of visual communication.

The solution was to offer a 'live' audio and video stream of events over the internet to remote attendees. We capture an event or meeting, send a live feed of this to a computer, this computer then manages all the connections from people wanting to listen to / watch the broadcast. We normally accompany the stream with a synchronous text chat to enable remote staff to contribute.

ULTRALAB regularly steams its events, both internal and external, such events have included the Summer School Celebration from the V&A Museum in London. This enabled contributing Schools worldwide to join the celebrations.

We can also provide this facility for other parts of the University. We recently steamed the Vice Chancellor’s Staff Forum and have also supported UCLT by with streaming some of their events, these events were broadcast enabling all staff members to view and/or contribute to the meetings, no matter where in the world they are.  

For the technically minded, we cater different internet bandwidths by providing 2 different streams, an audio only stream for those on 56k dial up -, and an audio and video stream for Broadband users. Typically  there is 8 seconds time delay caused by the buffering of the streams. As the streams are not two-way, we can't see the audience, so we have a live community text chat running along side, this enables discussion, minute taking and question asking.
For those unable to attend the session, a recording is made available as a progressive download.

The adoption of this technology has made a significant difference to the sense of inclusion for remote workers, a typical quote being

"Bring your sandwiches" was on the invitation to a lunchtime meeting, so I made a coffee to go with them, then took my seat at the meeting.  Everyone else was 240 miles away, I'd just got broadband and I was taking part in my first live streamed meeting with Ultralab.  I work from North Wales, and its a long way to go to Chelmsford but I felt as though I was almost there as I  watched the room fill with colleagues, listened to the banter before the formal agenda and posted my questions online to hear them read out at the meeting.  Since then I've become accustomed to joining Ultralab's web-streamed meetings, they are opportunities to join in the debates without leaving my desk, without relying on relayed messages and without feeling that I've been left out in the rain.  
Every time a meeting is mentioned there is a cry from the remote team, "Will it be streamed?"

And the answer, invariably is YES!


Another member of the remote team  stated that

"Streaming has been a great tool in ensuring engagement and participation at Ultralab meetings for remote workers.  It helps reinforce the sense of community and reduces isolation - which is an essential factor when working remotely.  The quality of vision and sound is excellent and adds significantly to the further reduction of isolation and compliments the ease of participation when used with the meeting Room in First Class.  It's an important lifeline for remote workers allowing participation not only in Ultralab meetings but also in workshops which would be inaccessible otherwise.."

So what's next?
For more information  contact Neil Boughen, neil@ultralab.net or Mark Constable mark@ultralab.net