New PA system for our Town Hall Meetings

Thanks to your support, the BVCA now has amplified sound and the ability to record our in-person events for those who cannot attend. We will be posting all events that are recorded to our Youtube channel at youtube.com/@bvca where people can watch/listen later if they were unable to attend. Youtube is also now reported to be the most popular podcasting method.

This setup focuses on audio mainly for a few reasons: 

• Easier to operate. 

  • one button to record - and easy to upload to YouTube

• Audio matters more than video: 

  • even if we record video but the audio is terrible - it's useless. but with clear audio recording of both speaker and audience Q&A, grainy video is fine - as long as the audio is clear.

• This setup is compatible with separately recorded video.

  • If someone wants to volunteer to record video separately, even using their phone, we can easily merge audio and video after the event.

• This is far more affordable that hiring staff to do this:

  • Our setup for audio recording cost $490 total - which we own and can use indefinitely..

  • 2 separate local AV crews gave us bids to just record the audio only: $2000! ($2500 if we wanted a video record). That is per event - which tells us that our solution is the best and most cost-effective.

We have posted our technical setup here - in the hopes of sharing our setup with any other nonprofit that might find it useful.