"I will get by"

Lots of personal stuff has been going on this week that I can't talk about in this blog, but it all has weirdly affected music in my head. 

This morning I woke up with The Grateful Dead's Touch of Grey (track 1 off of the 1987 album In the Dark). I think a lot of people recognize the refrain (I will get by / I will survive), if they don't recognize the song. More over, I think people might recognize the music video as well (the band playing the song as animatronic skeletons), if they aren't complete Deadheads (I wasn't "born on the bus". I know some of the songs because I've hearing them once or twice, but I can't really tell you what the title is or what album it's on). 

It's odd, the things that pop in our head. I haven't heard Touch of Grey in a dog's age, but somehow I will get by circled in my head for at least half an hour this morning. I did have to Google it to make sure I wasn't imagining the lyrics or artists. I was right in it being a Grateful Dead song, and I followed the rabbit hole and saw it was the skeleton video, something that aired a lot on MTV when I was younger (and the station played mainly all music videos). As Archie and Edith once sang, Those Were The Days).

I keep forgetting to post some new tech I saw at a community board meeting. Due to the new culture of video conferencing everything, the master board decided to spend a little over a thousand dollars ($1,049) and purchase an Owl Labs Meeting Owl 3 - 360° 1080p HD Conference Room Camera. 

We saw it on the table one day when we went to one of the meetings a few months ago. I kept wondering what it was, and one of our snowbird neighbors was zooming the meeting. She kept telling me I was in directly sightline of the camera, so I should wave to confirm I got the text. I told her I didn't know where the camera was, and she said that she sees me straight in front of her. I said "I see an owl looking thing on the table. Could that be the video camera?" She said she didn't know, but it is a clear picture. No distortion, nothing. 

As the meeting progressed, I kept watching the flat screen TV behind the board members, and saw the video playback of the room. Sure enough, the video kept moving slightly, and I saw myself. Well, it had to be this owl thing. No one talked about it, until a couple meetings later. Someone asked about the thing on the table and a board member explained that it's the video conference camera. At this point, my mom was back to watching the meetings in the house and she even remarked on how clear everything was. A complete upgrade from what they used to have. I think it also is picking up audio, because a comment was made how clear the sound is as well. 

For the parcel meetings, it's night and day. They don't have access to that contraption, so it's not high quality. Video is pixelated, sound is garbled. My mom asked one the board members she's friendly with about it, and the response is that the owl is a main board expenditure and only they are allowed to use it because it's a different association that owns it (we have a main board and a parcel board, and each parcel unfortunately doesn't use the same master management company). Therefore, my parcel is at the whim of the older technology. 

If people are still going to go the route of big video conferences and update their computers to slimmer models, I can see where this owl might be a new key to feeling like you're all in one room together. Having worked in the event industry for a few years (setting up and dismantling AV equipment), this would be so useful for when a company is trying to live stream their event to another part of the world. I remember quite a handful of retreats and openings that would happen at my hotel, where the various lectures were being recorded for other people to be able to watch. This is small enough that it seriously looks like decoration and you don't even realize it's actively recording. It means business and it's obvious. 

Is it worth the thousand dollars? Perhaps, if you were planning on using it for large scale ventures and could get a better return on it. 

If it was under a grand and you were using it for small business video conferencing, would it be worth it? Oh yeah. 100%. 

I don't know the price point would be worth it for a once a month meeting though. The picture and sound quality is amazing, but to keep it locked up for a 2-4 hour meeting once a month isn't cost effective. If it got used for a lot more events (like when I worked in the hotels), then I'd be like "let's record everything!". Even though it'd be a one and done event, these companies are here for a few days to a week, depending on what's going on. Unless you're a bigger community or a business who needs it on a regular basis (more than once a month), I conflicted on using it. 

I don't want to keep sounding negative about it. The features are amazing and I'd love to see it used more. Maybe in my next life I'll be able to accomplish that. 

Until then, keep surviving. 

Cheers;