The recent Committee of the Whole meeting, held in the spacious confines of the Squamish Seniors’ Centre, gave councillors and the community an opportunity to hear from members of the citizen committee taking a comprehensive look at the Woodfibre LNG proposal.
It also underscored the need for a tune-up in the communications logistics department.
Anybody who accessed the DOS website for live streaming of the event, or logged in later, had no problem with the video portion. The audio component proved to be more challenging. In a damage control bulletin issued by municipal staff the “exceptionally poor” sound quality was attributed to “technical issues that arose from the meeting being held off-site from council chambers.”
One of the first lessons learned in communications 101 is that presentation hosts who rely on audio/visual equipment should always vet the system early enough to avoid embarrassments later, even more so when those hosts are on the municipal payroll and the subject is the most contentious commercial project to hit these parts since Mount Garibaldi spewed magma into the valley below.
To prevent future malfunctions, district officials have indicated they “will be re-testing and refining this mobile technology before the next off-site meeting.”
The second key recommendation from communications 101 is never allow a presentation to lapse into tedium.
For a good part of this three-hour encounter attendees were subjected to members of the committee reading verbatim directly from the Woodfibre Liquefied Natural Gas Staff Advisory Report as it appeared on a screen at the front of the room. On the other hand, a recital of the projected passages was almost mandatory because a combination of lighting issues and undersized script made the text hard to decipher for attendees who were not sitting in close proximity to the display.
That takes us to recommendation number three in the communications 101 guide: don’t bother with visuals unless they are clear.
But let’s not resort to a biblical beating of chests and tearing of garments in frustration here. To their credit, the committee members who were on the hot seat offered some strategic insights moving forward with this project, particularly towards the end of the meeting, when they were grilled by councillors and other attendees. And the previously mentioned oversights should not be construed as a repudiation of the Woodfibre LNG committee’s work. The depth of information issued in their interim report offers a valuable body of research and will provide a bridge to further investigation.
