Hybrid Meetings for San Diego County's Independent Redistricting Commission

One of our most impactful projects in 2021 was our work with the County of San Diego to produce hybrid public hearings for the Independent Redistricting Commission (IRC).

Every 10 years, following the release of U.S. census data, the County of San Diego is faced with the critical challenge of redrawing district lines to better service the changing population demographics and concentrations from the past decade. One of the most critical components of this process is facilitating public comment to gather information on key Communities of Interest not fully captured by the census data.

Due to the continued need to provide a virtual option for both the public and members of the Independent Redistricting Commission, we were contracted to provide a seamless hybrid solution. This solution allowed participants to view and participate in the meetings and public hearings whether they were in person or joining the Zoom meeting remotely, all while adhering to standard public hearing government procedures.

Public Hearing #1 in Mira Mesa. Here you can see one of the monitors we displayed the remote commissioners on for the in-person audience to see. This was done at all locations.

Public Hearing #3 in Chula Vista. It was important that the virtual audience could see all commissioners at the same time.

To accomplish this, we utilized our streaming system to collect and route all audio and video sources from within the room to Zoom, and bring the audio and video from remote participants back into the room, all while preventing any audio feedback loops.

Our work in facilitating the broadcast and hybrid elements of this critical county initiative was covered by CBS 8.

One of the major milestones with this project was the dexterity of our team members to adapt our setup to 15 different facilities throughout the county varying in size and built-in A/V capabilities, as well as to a fluctuating combination of commissioners joining in-person vs. remotely.

These varying scenarios required different configurations of dynamic content to be sent to Zoom for the virtual viewer, and to monitors in the room for the in-person commissioners and public audience.

This content would continue to change throughout the duration of each public hearing as the IRC’s remote consultants and demographers would engage and disengage screen sharing of pertinent information such as live mapping demonstrations.