Information for presenters
This page is to offer support with all aspects of presenting at Borrowed Time.
If you mis-placed (or never found) the letter we sent out to all presenters by email on October 5, you can download it here
Of course if you have a question you can’t find the answer to here, don’t hesitate to contact us.
Basic technical information
Basic technical information
As you should already know, this event takes place on Hopin, not on Zoom. You will need to be signed up to Hopin and be registered for the event and for any rehearsals (see elsewhere on this page).
Just as you can in Zoom, you can share your screen as part of your presentation.
That means you can show anything you can see on your screen whether that’s a single image or a full-blown PowerPoint or Keynote presentation.
The exception to this is video. Video requires a lot of processing power and a great connection to send to an audience. Hopin has a mechanism that allows you to show a YouTube video within your presentation without requiring these resources. If you don’t have uploading access to YouTube we can do that for you. More on this later.
How long should my presentation be?
In general we advise that presentations are around 20 minutes, ensuring that time is left for discussion and Q&A.
It’s too easy to turn events like this a talk-at shop with too little time for discussion and exchange of ideas.
Your session chair will give you a five-minute warning and will stop you at 20 minutes if you appear not to be wrapping things up.
This, of course, also ensure a fair distribution of time for other presenters in your session.
Basic Hopin information - getting started
Hopin
As we have already mentioned in other information sent to you, we are using a platform called Hopin for this event.
That’s because it allows for much more conference-like ways to meet up with people and run multiple sessions side-by-side. An event like this is also far easier to navigate than on Zoom.
Hopin plays in a browser. As a presenter you absolutely need to be on a laptop or desktop computer and use either Chrome (best) or Firefox (OK). We learnt already that Safari, for example, will not allow you to share your screen properly.
To register for the Borrowed Time event at Hopin, go to the event listing, click Join Event and choose either General Registration (pre-paid) if you’re already registered through the Borrowed Time website or Presenter registration if you haven’t. After you have done that you will be asked to ‘Login to the event’. Do NOT try an login with your Borrowed Time password! Instead you need to create a new Hopin account – see ‘Password problems?’ below for more details.
If you want to look at some more detailed information about being a presenter on Hopin you’ll find it here. You don’t need to worry about some of this information, but if you are, for example, a workshop leader you may also be moderating the session (but mostly this will all be set up ahead of time so there shouldn’t really be anything to do).
There is a particularly helpful page which is a basic primer on how to be a presenter (‘speaker’ as Hopin calls it) on Hopin.
When Hopin is referring to a ‘session’ they mean everything that is not happening on the Main Stage. The Main Stage is mostly keynote events and a few of the evening sessions.
We have listed all the event information on this Google doc We haven’t included this on this page because we don’t want to make the backstage links public. You do not need the backstage link unless you are presenting on the main stage.
You can access Hopin help at https://hopin.zendesk.com/hc/en-us
Password problems?
- A minimum of 10 characters
- at least 1 special character (eg & * ^ % etc)
- at least 1 number
- at least 1 letter
Testing your connection
If you are would like to test your system when there is no event running, use this page.
This will also check your internet connection. Don’t be alarmed if it gives you bad news – Hopin has rather high expectations of what is ‘normal’.
If however the test says that your broadband is unusable for Hopin, contact us.
Sending us your videos
If you want to send your video to us so that we can upload it to YouTube, there are a number of ways you can do this.
- You can use Dropbox if you have an account. All you need to do is upload your video to your Dropbox account and then send it to dropbox@art-earth.org.uk.
- You can use wetransfer.com but if you don’t have a paid account the limit is 2GB which is too small for most video of a decent quality. You can upgrade your account for one month only for about £10.
- There are few other file transfer sites that will send large files (up to 10GB) for free. These include SendTransfer, Airbridge, and Jetdrop – we’re sure there are others too. These free services come and go but a simple Google search will find one easily.
- What are we looking for in terms of quality/resolution? – see below
- Please don’t leave this to the last minute. Our main office is in a rural location with fairly poor upload speeds so it can take hours to upload a single video. And YouTube also has daily and weekly limits, so we can’t do them all in one go anyway. Ideally we need your video files no later than October 14.
Video quality
Send us the best quality you can! However there’s no point in sending a cinema quality file that is hundreds of gigabytes in size.
We want something like:
- HD quality (resolution 1080×1920) OR lower quality HD (resolution 1280×720). Anything less than this is unacceptable and won’t look good; while you can opt for a higher resolution like 4K it’s unlikely to make a lot of difference when played via a website.
- We prefer .mov files, .mp4 or .m4a are OK. We don’t really like .avi or .wmv files. We can handle .webm files.
- When you have the option, use H.264 for your codec (this should be an option in the software you are using)
- Sound should be AAC stereo at 48KHz ideally, or mp3 otherwise.
If all this is meaningless to you, get some advice! If you’re really stuck we can help talk it through with you.
Sharing video
Although you can share your screen during an online event in most cases video plays very poorly. Hopin has a different approach to this and allows presenters to play YouTube videos out directly in their presentation window. This makes the quality hugely better for the audience.
This facility has been turned on (by us) for every session. All you need to do once you are live is click the YouTube play button in the middle bottom of the screen and it will prompt you to put in the URL. As soon as you do that the video will start to play. If you want to play an excerpt from a film, we suggest you either make a special cut and upload it to YouTube or send us the appropriate materials and instructions. In most cases we can make a cut from an existing YouTube film but you will need to be very precise in instructing us.
Don’t worry if you can’t upload to YouTube – we can do that for you and give you the link to use.
You will be able to practice this at the rehearsals.
It’s always advisable to wear headphones and mute your microphone when you’re playing something else out. That will stop the ‘echo’ effect that you sometimes here during online sessions.
If you would like to look at additional information from Hopin find it here.
Coming back to Hopin each day
When you return to Hopin make sure you are logged in.
As long as you are logged in, clicking ‘Join Event’ will bring you straight to reception.
If you didn’t create a Hopin account when you registered (do you have a password? if you do then you have an account) you will need to make one now. As long as you use the same email address you used when you registered Hopin will remember your registration.
If you are asked to register again then you are not logged in. You may not be able to register twice.
We’re sorry this is sometimes not straightforward. The problem seems to be that Hopin allows people to register for events without creating a Hopin account – so when you come back to visit the event it doesn’t know who you are if you are not logged in.
This page has more detail.