Tech Forum

Hagothsen wrote:So then, why is it that Sake Conference needs be more private than say, the Priesthood Session of General Conference?

I'm not saying I know better than our leaders. I know recording Stake Conference is not allowed, even forbidden. So I humbly ask, why? (We're allowed to do that now.)

Speaking for myself, I can think of two reasons:
Handbook 2: 2.1.1 on Priesthood keys: "The President of the Church delegates priesthood keys to other priesthood leaders so they can preside in their areas of responsibility. .... This presiding authority is valid only for the designated responsibilities and within the geographic jurisdiction of each leader’s calling." So while there may be much said that would be good to hear, any inspiration is valid and binding only on that stake and not the general membership of the church. The keys to speaking to the world rests with the First Presidency and the Twelve.

Secondly, the church takes doctrinal purity quite seriously. Talks for General Conference are prepared and shared ahead of time - if nothing else to help the translators and Closed Captioning to be prepared. I suspect they're also vetted for any false doctrine. Most of the speakers are from the Twelve, Seventy, Presiding Bishopric, or heads of Auxiliaries. On the other hand, Stake conferences frequently have members of the stake speaking on an assigned topic, but no one has reviewed their talk ahead of time.

But ultimately, it's a question of obedience. We've been given the principles and asked to follow them.

johnshaw wrote:

Hagothsen wrote:You say that inspiration used to bless saints at any given Stake Conference, is local to those saints, and not to the church as a whole. Could we not say the same thing about inspiration given at a single coordinating council meeting?

I'm still not sure what you're talking about, of course it's the case. In that case there is Stewardship assigned to the Area Authority who leads the Coordinating Council through Priesthood direction.

Let me try again.

Inspiration given at any Stake Conference is meant for, and should only be made available to, members of that stake.
Meanwhile, inspiration given at any Coordinating Council Meeting is applicable to and appropriately applied throughout the entire church?

Hagothsen wrote:Meanwhile, inspiration given at any Coordinating Council Meeting is applicable to and appropriately applied throughout the entire church?

I'm not sure which meetings you're talking about, but the Coordinating Council Meetings I can find are somewhere between Stake and Area in scope. They would not be worldwide. Only CHQ is worldwide.

Despite calling the GSC, and making an honest attempt through CHQ, where I was initially connected to Stake Conference Scheduling, then passed to a manager in ICS, I've found no prohibition against, and no counsel to stop using YouTube, other than from the original post in this thread. The most strident answer I got, was a politically charged "It's not approved." I distinctly got the feeling of "If you use it, we can't help you." The general consensus appears to be, that because an Area Authority directed Stake President's in Davis County to stop using YouTube, we all should follow, regardless of location. There have also been great points about recording, and Priesthood Authority. At this point, it's way over my spiritual pay-grade.

I've got my appointment set-up with my Stake President to present all of the opinions expressed in this thread. Ultimately, unless I hear it directly through my chain of Priesthood Authority, I won't necessarily believe it applies to me. Nevertheless, I would be less than honest if I didn't present all sides of this discussion to my Stake President, and trust in his judgment, not mine. I suspect he'll ask our Area Authority, If they tell me to not use YouTube, I won't. FWIW, I'll extend the same directive to all CDNs, Our stake is down to two buildings now. I may just use a Slingbox, we've got the bandwidth to make it work.

Hagothsen wrote:...I've found no prohibition against, and no counsel to stop using YouTube, other than from the original post in this thread.

Thanks for bringing us back on topic. I was the OP and although I posted this:

Mikerowaved wrote:I can't confirm this is a church-wide policy, but it appears to be leaning in that direction.

I probably didn't make it clear enough that, so far, this direction came from my SP following a Coordinating Council Meeting, where the Area Authority made this point very clear. If your SP hasn't received that direction (yet), then I don't see a problem using it.

YouTube has a vast array of servers worldwide that are constantly being updated. (My son works for Google and spent several years working on the YouTube side of things.) I also webcast other non-LDS live events using YouTube and have never experienced a single glitch that wasn't my fault. And did I mention they are free to use?

I don't want to knock the servers the church leases for their webcasting portal. I'm sure they're perfectly capable. I just think that the program was rolled out a bit prematurely. A stake conference is not a great venue for discovering bugs. We're seeing less reports of webcasting problems in the forum, so maybe I can start putting more trust in the church portal. I can either use that, or I'll setup a VPN to the other building and unicast the stream directly to the receiving PC.

I for one wish they'd let us keep a short-term copy. The reason is this: When I'm producing a broadcast, I'm focused on the tech of the broadcast not necessarily the message, checking overflow rooms, monitoring the internet connection and broadcast, chatting with the remote site(s) to verify things on their end, etc... . Maybe it's a little bit "Martha" of me, but I want to make sure that the rest of the stake is able to receive the message and feel the spirit with minimal distractions. When the conference is over, I would like to be able to be spiritually fed as well and review the messages given. But, this is one of the tech issues where the direction is very clear.

As for YouTube, I've used a variety of alternative streaming solutions in tandem with the church's system for the last several years. The reason for this is that I've found the quality of the church's solution to be hit or miss, with about a 50% success rate. I might be in sort of a unique position, as I've been in this calling for coming up on 10 years, and for the majority of that period I've supported broadcasting at multiple stakes (for about 3 years, I was doing 6 stake conferences a year in addition to a few regional meetings, the last 3 years I've supported 2 stakes who currently share a building), so even though we weren't among the first to do webcasting, I've gotten a lot of experience in a relatively short period of time. The last stake conference, both stakes had it the same day. The first stake had a bunch of random drops throughout testing the day before, and in the pre-broadcast leading up to conference start, so we decided to go to the alternate stream. The second conference, the connection seemed more solid for some reason, so we stayed with the church's system, and had no issues. There are a lot of factors that could contribute to why the first broadcast had issues and the second one didn't, but it's always made me nervous to rely on a single streaming solution. I'm a big proponent of eliminating single points of failure whenever possible. I can't have redundant internet connections (as much as I'd love to), so I'm stuck with that one, and I can't have redundant sound systems in the building, but in as many places as it is feasible I try to have redundant systems and/or backup systems. I haven't heard anything regarding YouTube from our Area Authority (I just spoke with him last week), so for now I'll keep it in my stable of possible alternative streaming solutions.

I ask the presiding authority before each SC if I can record the meeting for my own use. To be fair, I inform them that this is prohibited. I promise to view it one time and then delete it. I haven't had a denial yet. If a visiting GA says no, then so be it.

Well, new information has come to light (not sure when), but while setting up for webcasting my stake conference, I ran across this on the Meetinghouse Technology / Webcast page. Down near the bottom is a section titled "Best Practices" and the very first link was for a PDF on "Alternate broadcast solutions". Really? Well, here's the jist of the text:

Webcast: How to Broadcast When Troubleshooting Hasn’t Worked

The Church’s current webcast solution is always improving and thousands of broadcasts are successful
each year. However, issues can still arise.

If you have recently tested the Church’s meetinghouse webcast solution and all troubleshooting
efforts have been unsuccessful, you may choose to use an alternative live-stream product for your
broadcast event. Although there are hundreds of live-stream products in the marketplace that may
meet your specific needs, many have found success using YouTube Live as their alternate product.

They must have been eavesdropping on the forum!

It goes on to say that for support, you're on your own, but that goes with the territory.

Splendid!!!! Thanks for posting this.

If be interested to know what failures people have that would send them to YouTube. Because not having 1080p isn't a reason, neither are any of the excuses I've seen on this forum. Whatever people want to do I guess.