It goes without saying that today we are in uncharted territory. For many of our agency partners, COVID-19 has created a challenging question: How can we keep public engagement processes on track if we can’t hold meetings? The implications are serious. Postponing meetings means inevitable project delays, and putting critical state and federal dollars at risk. Before we act, we must first take a step back to understand where exactly we find ourselves – since many communities are in slightly different situations. If you answered “no” to all of these, you may be able to use consumer-oriented tools like YouTube Live to broadcast your scaled-down meetings. For most organizations, though, these factors represent challenges that are hard to address with streaming services like YouTube and Facebook Live and off-the-shelf tools like GotoMeeting and Cisco WebEx. Important Note: Due to meeting hijackings, many IT departments are banning Zoom from being used altogether. Keep reading to see the key differences between social media live streaming, conferencing tools, and interactive virtual meetings or schedule a 15-minute call for a brief overview. Facebook Live and YouTube Live are powerful tools, and have a few things going for them: But on their own, these platforms come with tradeoffs that make them a tough fit for public meetings. For these reasons, most organizations choose to avoid using Facebook Live and YouTube as a standalone virtual meetings solution. Most organizations already have a license to conferencing tools like Cisco Webex, GotoMeeting, Skype, or Google Hangouts. These tools have proven invaluable during the COVID-19 crisis for internal coordination and have a lot going for them: However, these tools also have significant drawbacks when it comes to public meetings. Given these risks and the associated negative outcomes, these conferencing solution also are a poor fit for a public meetings solution. A true solution to the public engagement challenge starts to look like a combination of the benefits of live broadcast and meeting tools – with a focus on managing the inherent challenges associated with public comments. Our team has been focused on integrating conferencing and live broadcast tools directly into the PublicInput.com platform. We’ve focused on three key integrations to bring together a complete virtual meetings solution. In light of the key concerns we listed with these platforms, PublicInput.com has created deep integrations with both platforms to:Assessing public engagement during coronavirus
Assessing your organization’s virtual meeting needs starts with answering a few key questions:
What about social media tools like Facebook Live?
What about off-the-shelf conferencing tools like GotoMeeting or WebEx?
A virtual meeting solution must:
Introducing the PublicInput.com Virtual Meetings Platform
Public-facing solutions
Admin-facing solutions
Public participation database
How it works
Live meeting integrations for Facebook Live and YouTube


WebEx integrations for interactive virtual public meetings
In light of the key concerns we listed with these platforms, PublicInput.com has created deep integrations with both platforms to:
- Multiple remote presenters and unlimited attendees
- Screen sharing for presentations
- Easy, no-login access for the general public
- Real-time comments and questions using the PublicInput.com engagement hub

Phone
Phone integrations to take phone-in public comments and questions
Even with robust online deployments like those seen with the WebEx integration, you still need a way to manage voice comments. We’ve seen organizations try to do this through conferencing tools, but managing a queue and preventing the public-chat issues we covered earlier has proven difficult.
To address this, we’ve created call in lines with meeting-specific codes for residents to call and record their comment or question. Staff receive a transcription of these in seconds, and can choose to play these in the meeting, or relay the questions to officials.
The beta version of this plays a voice-to-text prompt that is pre-populated by the admins, and we expect multi-lingual, pre-recorded prompts to be feasible within the next two weeks.

What does it cost to deploy a solution like this?
Normally we provide software on enterprise, multi-year contracts. Given the situation, we’re creating a no-commitment monthly plan for organizations available. Get in touch with us for a quote. The tool includes:
- Full access to the virtual meetings toolkit
- Online engagement portal with subscriber signup and meeting listing
- 5 admin seats for one department
- Engagement templates to quickly deploy best practices
Organizations have the option to purchase credit packages for Email, Text, and Targeted Social communications on an as-needed basis.
To get started, schedule an onboarding call. On the call we’ll create your account, schedule a training session, add administrators, and answer any questions.