AI-generated image of a booster club meeting by DALL-E

Prior to my last post, it had been almost 2 months since I shared my thoughts here on this humble blog, and the response from you my dear readers was overwhelming. Overwhelmingly non-existent, but I digress. With the volume of email we all get, not to forget RSS feeds for some as well, I am sure my musings may have taken a backseat to everything else going on in the world.

What was the reason for this? I’ve recently gotten a little busier than the typical busy that my life is. So what am I doing? I was recently elected the president of my kids high school sports Booster Club.

The Booster Club is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that is independent of the school yet tied to it by its charter. I’ve been involved for the last two years, helping with the Web site and starting an email newsletter. As I realized these could be handled by more creative and marketing focused-people plus an opening for this leadership position, I decided to jump in, of course with my wife’s blessing.

When I told people what I was doing this I got a variety of reactions, everything from, “congratudolences” to why on earth would I want to do that. To that end I am able to sum up my reasons in one word: impact.

In this election year here in the US, I’ve repeatedly heard a phrase familiar to me over the years attributed to the late historian James Bryce regarding someone taking on a top leadership position: the presidency is open to anyone who has the audacity to believe they can do it. Even for a position like the president of a Booster Club I think you have to believe similarly. Yes, I can take on this leadership role and yes, I can fulfill it to the best of my abilities. For me that was a big part of it, but equally important is it’s helping me fulfill something in missing in my life, in having a leadership position that I don’t quite have elsewhere.

Similar Yet Different

When I put my hat in the ring I knew a little of what I was getting into as I’ve had leadership roles in non-profit organizations in the past. Most notably in the early 2000s I was president of the Boston Jaycees, a member-run leadership organization that was affiliated with a larger US-based and international society. The Boston chapter had just under 100 members and all the challenges you think you’d have with an organization of young people trying to make a difference in their community. Our greatest one was recruiting new members. People would have to commit not only a membership dues but also to being involved as we were volunteer-run; we needed people to be active and run projects, ideally creating a base that would be the future leadership of the chapter. I recall from that time period someone telling me that your job as a leader to find your successor, something that is in the back of my mind as I commence this new role.

Impact to me is two-fold. First there’s the organization’s impact on the community. In this case the Booster Club serves the high school athletic programs with equipment and funds from the money we raise from donations and concession sales. Then there’s the personal impact. This is satisfaction from the good I and all the others involved do in growing our Booster Club and in the support we provide. It’s that personal pride from a job well done and overcoming challenges.

That part about growing the Booster Club is something that’s not entirely new to me, and probably even greater than it was the last time I encountered it. Back in the late 90s and early 2000 with the Jaycees, we were competing for the time of young adults against them staying home, watching cable TV and playing video games. If they actually did something, many would want minimal commitment. The Booster Club audience is grown adults who have very active children participating in sports, academics and other activities and sometimes the last thing those parents want to do is work in a concession stand slinging burgers and hot dogs, let alone take a leadership or other role in the club.

Back to the personal impact, back when I was the Jaycees president I would occasionally hear snarky comments that I was in it to stroke my own ego. Sure, to say that you’re the “president” of something can boost one a bit, but it is a healthy reminder as well that in order to fulfill the position you have to rise up. You have to be a better person than you are and sometimes you got a bear the brunt of things that you may not think you should in order to ensure progress, whether it’s lending a hand in different areas, having tough conversations with people and putting new, bold initiatives out there.

As I reflect on just the past few months I’ve been at the helm of the Booster Club it’s so far so good, but there’s much to do. Hopefully it’s won’t continue to curtail my blogging or other activities that I enjoy.

Deconstructing Stepping Up to Volunteer Leadership

I’ve often said there’s never a best time for anything and this is true whether it’s volunteering leadership or making a difference in an organization. For myself, even though I’ve been through this before, I’ve always enjoyed it and I’m looking forward to this new role with new people and opportunities before me and the opportunity to make an impact in the community and myself.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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So I have more five dollar bills in my wallet these days.

Why? The genesis for this was not having smaller bills on me and as a result costing me more than I hoped when tipping on a recent trip to Chicago. I was staying at a nicer hotel and at almost every turn there was someone to tip. As most ATMs today just give $20 dollar bills, that was all I had. Needless to say it made me look like a really generous guy.

Inflation Hits Gratuity

With the prices of everything going up over the last several years, restaurants have not been immune from this. It is evident in not only the menu prices being higher, but the suggestions for what to tip the wait staff are right up there too. You know those “tipping tables” you see at the bottom of your bill, the ones that list percentages and the dollar amounts to make it “easier” for you to tip? In the past they would likely offer 15% and 20%, and maybe sometimes 25%. These days I am seeing them starting at 18% and sometimes going as high as 30%! That, and more restaurants are automatically adding a tip on parties larger than 4 plus that tipping table too. Clearly restaurant staff are being hit by inflation like the rest of this, and with the overall check being higher, many diners are likely not tipping as they used to.

Thus I started carrying fives on me. Doing so was made easier by my new bank’s ATMs offering $5 bills along with $20 and even $1 bills – it also offers $100 bills as well and, though a popular thing to carry on you in Wisconsin I pass on those, but I digress. It allows me to tip appropriately, as well as not look too cheap by handing someone simply a one-dollar bill.

Making It Real

Carrying more cash on me has been something I have actually been doing for a while. From every expense you make being tracked to ginormous bank statements listing those very transactions to having had a few attempts of hacking of my bank accounts in recent years, by using cash more reduces all of this. Not to mention some merchants are passing along to their customers their credit card fees. Several local gas stations are offering cash prices up to 5 cents off a gallon. With filling up 2 cars every week, this adds up quickly, and I’ll take the reduced cost of anything anywhere I can. Even though the stands at the farmers market take cards and accept payments from mobile apps like Venmo, they are always appreciative to take old-fashioned fiat currency.

Deconstructing Carrying Fives

When it comes to inflation we often feel powerless to merely succumbing to it. By carrying five dollar bills on me it is attempt to counter this wave. Seeing cash actually leaving your wallet makes you think about what you are doing with that money, more than a piece of plastic or QR code ever will. By placing a bill in a tip jar or someone’s hand makes the acknowledgement of gratuity more real. One $5 is easier than fishing a couple of ones from your wallet and makes a little more generous statement without going over the top.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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A.I.-generated image by DALL-E of a mentor mentee discussion

Last fall I took a non-credit certificate course through the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay on mentoring. Why did I do this? Long time readers of this humble blog may vaguely recall me writing in the past pessimistically on the lack of mentorship in the technology field and the fact that I did not have a formal mentor at that time.

Where I’ve had many informal mentors that have been valuable to me throughout my life and career, I have never been in a formal mentor/mentee relationship. That being said, I’ve been told by many people specifically that I have been a mentor to them. In those cases it was not in a formal mentor/mentee relationship nor was I necessarily seeking that with them. Through all of this I knew there was more to mentoring and this was the catalyst for me taking the certificate course.

My greatest takeaway from the course was learning the optimal structure of a mentoring relationship between the mentor and the mentee. From the goals of both the mentee and mentor (yes, the mentor should gain much from this too!) to a formal mentoring agreement to the cadence and format of meetings the course gave me a true 360 degree understanding of mentoring. The course was organized into 3, 2-hour virtual sessions, with some attendees being local to northeast Wisconsin and others from around the US. There were guest speakers in each session sharing their experience on topics from process to ethics. Each session had pre-work including articles and exercises which lent to a great overall learning experience. I left with the tools to properly initiate and sustain a mentoring relationship. There was no exam at the end, however upon completion I was awarded a certificate suitable for framing and the following verifiable digital badge – click the badge below to see for yourself.

Now What?

So what do I do this? Of course I’ve added the digital badge to my LinkedIn profile, the About page here at The Hot Iron and my resume. My employer has no formal mentorship program so it is nothing I will be officially applying there but will continue to informally mentor staff and colleagues. There are mentor programs out there – for example, UW-Green Bay has one and is seeking volunteer mentors – however with my current schedule I decided not to pursue it, yet. Where I haven’t looked into mentoring programs a little closer to home (I prefer to meet people face-to-face whenever possible) that will be the path I will likely take to get into formal mentoring.

I decided to pay for this course myself, and at around $300 it was good value for the return. More information on the course is available on the UW-Green Bay Web site. As of writing this there is not a date listed for a future offering, however I’d recommend contacting them as I did to be in the know when another is scheduled. And feel free to tell them that I sent you.

Deconstructing Mentoring Education

Anything worth doing is worth doing well. As I felt this way about mentoring, I took this certificate course to get the tools and right mindset should the opportunity present itself, either as a mentor or a mentee. It was an enjoyable experience that has inspired me, at the right time, to pursue an activity I feel I will be good at.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Of all the books I read in 2023 I actually read them – they were all physical, paper books and none were audiobooks (with no disrespect to those who are in the audiobook business, but I digress). As much as I’m driving the kids to the various activities one might think I’d be into audiobooks. I’m not, as I’m listening to podcast and music while driving. Books are an enjoyable getaway from the mundane and I enjoy the tactile experience.

One book I was planning to read was the Holy Bible. Despite being the good Catholic boy I (think that I) am, I have never actually sat down and read the Bible. I’ve read passages from it when directed to it in my religious education but as a Roman Catholic, we are fed a digested version in our weekly readings and gospels at mass. Shortly into January of last year I learned about The Bible in a Year Podcast. Where I didn’t have a whole lot of information on it I figured I’d give it a try and started with the first episode. I was immediately hooked and I made it through each and every episode.

The Bible in a Year Podcast is hosted by Fr. Mike Schmitz, a priest who serves at the University of Minnesota – Duluth. In each episode he reads from The Great Adventure Catholic Bible, a version of the bible available from Ascension Press, the publisher of the podcast. Each episode includes readings, psalms and verses followed by discussion and interpretation of what Fr. Mike just read. In addition to Fr. Mike, an occasional guest is Jeff Cavins, a lay Bible scholar who is the editor of the Great Adventure Catholic Bible, who provided additional commentary and insight throughout the year.

So can one have takeaways from experiencing the Bible as a podcast?

Heard the source – As I mentioned before, in a Catholic Mass we have readings and a gospel each week and they are taken from the Bible. Going through The Bible in a Year Podcast I actually heard the “raw” Bible, or at least how it has been translated. For example, the Prayer of Aaron, which I learned from my pastor in Boston, comes from the Book of Numbers, Chapter 6.

That’s in the Bible? – It was interesting to hear some of the passages in the Bible. There were a lot of stories and tales that I wouldn’t at face value consider prayers or relevant stories. Then there’s the rather intricate description of the Arc of the Covenant which went into details on its size and materials used to build it, or the Book of Numbers which was just that, full of numbers. The podcast also had a mature audience warning because there are some themes in it that are probably not appropriate for young kids.

Need more priests like Fr. Mike – To say Fr. Mike is enthusiastic and energetic is an understatement. I’ve only met a few priest in my lifetime to have that kind of energy and are not preaching down to you. Many priests are all “fire and brimstone” and leave you with a guilty feeling. Sure Fr. Mike is a younger priest, but I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily the reason as my former priest in Boston, Fr, Joe, was an older priest and was simply amazing. We need more priest like this, and of course I say this realizing there’s a shortage of priests throughout the world because people just don’t take up the vocation.

In the new year, I decided to further my religious study journey by listening to The Catechism in a Year podcast also from Fr. Mike. It’s still early so check back in a year and see if I make it all the way through and my takeaways from it. I may also pick up my own copy of The Great Adventure Catholic Bible and follow The Bible in a Year podcast again in 2025, but this year first.

If you are Catholic or Christian or just curious, I recommend The Bible in a Year Podcast. As it’s still early in 2024 you can go back and start from the beginning and catch up on each episode which vary from about 20 minutes to a half an hour each day. As this is something that I can’t physically pass along to others, I pass this along to you in words and spirits.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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It’s been over a year and a half since I first wrote about the work I and others have done with livestreaming swim meets, and what a time it has been. Since that original post the gear and team has covered over a dozen swim meets to thousands of viewers. Along the way we have made a myriad of improvements to the process and equipment, and I would like to share these as well as what we learned along the way.

Still livestreaming swim meets?

Some reading may be thinking, you’re still livestreaming? Isn’t that a thing of the past? Sure, the efforts started in 2021 was born of necessity, but the demand hasn’t lessened. Where some venue and sports have suspended livestreaming, I and others wholeheartedly disagree. From busy families to distant friends and relatives, the ability to see live action in a quality broadcast persists. Even though there are commercial, automated solutions available where you have to pay to watch a limited-featured broadcast, the emphasis on quality keeps me and the others in our crew doing what we are doing.

The Breakdown

Below I organized the changes and improvements with the software, hardware, audio and content areas of livestreaming. Where the picture above shows our latest configuration, you can watch the culmination of the efforts involved with the latest recorded broadcast of my high school’s hosting of the Junior Varsity Conference swim meet on YouTube.

Software

We are still using OBS Studio and even with the more we have done with it, we are still barely scratching the surface on its capabilities. A combination of built-in features new to us as well as plugins to the platform allowed for ease of management and enhanced capabilities.

We started using Scene Collections for each swim meet and team to better organize them. This allows us to switch between color and scene configurations easily with little required enhancements to them. I say required as many times we are copying scenes from one collection to another due to something new I learned or want to experiment with. For example, I have some collections for a meet with multiple scenes that is manually managed, as well as collection with a single scene for an “autopilot” meet – once I couldn’t be there to direct the meet, so we left a single scene on, and one of the crew started and stopped it for each meet session. The single scene incorporated 2 cameras and the scoreboard, as you can see here:

To make the management of scenes easier, I installed the Source Copy plugin for copying and moving scenes between collections. Even if you don’t think you will use this, if you are livestreaming multiple meets or events, you will. Another plug-in we started using was the OBS-NDI v 4.9.2 from dev47apps for NDI cameras and iPhone. This allowed us to use our iPhones as a Web cam, and it was amazingly easy to do so. In addition to the plug-in we installed the NDI HX Camera app on our iPhones. Where the app was a little on the pricey side at US$20, it was worth what we gained in flexibility. As long as the iPhone was on the same network as the OBS computer, we could simply select the NDI source and what was on the phone was in a scene. We experimented with this at our summer meets to get close-up footage of races ending at the far end of the pool as well as a roving camera for awards presentations.

Other enhancements to our livestreams came from learning features in OBS. As our scoreboard was out for a while, we had a need to easily update the current event and heat in the swim meet. We did this with loading the events and heats into a text file with each one on its own line, then used this in a text source to read the first line of the file. When editing the text file to remove the top line, upon saving it the new top line would appear in the scene. Another enhanced use of text was to add a crawler or horizontally-scrolling text on a scene. This tutorial is a good example of how to add a crawler.

Hardware

Although we only made one true addition to our hardware, it was a significant one – an Elgato Stream Deck Mini. A Stream Deck is a device with multiple buttons that can be programmed by accompanying software on the computer to execute any commands, and not just for OBS, but it is very popular among livestreamers. After much deliberation I decided on the Mini with just 6 buttons. Why? There are usually a handful of scenes that are a go-to, and programming them to Stream Deck buttons made scene switching a breeze. And with only 6, sometimes you didn’t even need to look at the buttons to know where which was which. We did program one button to throw up a graphic with no sound as an “oh shit” scene in case we needed to cut away from all cameras.

Another enhancement could fall under hardware, and that was the use of 3M Command strips and hooks. We use the Velcro-like Command strips to mount the cameras, and they stay up with no problems. We also use Command hooks for running cables along the walls. The nice thing about them is that even though they are designed to easily be removed, the strips and hooks have stayed up in the high-humidity environment of a pool for several years now.

Audio

Audio thus far has been an Achilles’ Heel of the broadcasts. The first few meets we livestreamed years ago did not have any audio at all. Where later on we toyed with tapping into the swim meet announcer’s microphone, we decided to add our own audio and do our own play-by-play. We have been lucky to have the announcer we do for the high school girls swim meets, and I have been getting more comfortable with this duty as time goes on, building on my meet announcing experience.

When the mic was off, however, we would not be sending any audio over the livestream. This would throw YouTube warnings we simply ignored. It also made for a poor audio experience to go from dead air to someone’s booming voice. I was able to eliminate the dead air by adding an open source audio file of ambient indoor pool sounds and looping it. There are many out there to choose from, and unfortunately I never saved the source link for the main file I use to share with you. This looping audio allowed for a more overall natural sounding broadcast.

Originally the mic we used was a low-end USB mic, and it did a good job but not a great one. The sound was distorted and even with some adjustments to OBS audio settings there wasn’t much improvement. We then decided to up the game by borrowing a mixer and an XLR microphone. The quality improved but there was static and some distortion I attributed to the audio cable between the mixer and the computer audio input jack. When I decided to try a USB cable I found this refurbished mini USB Pyle mixer for the same price of a cable. Adding 2 Shure PGA48 microphones gave us a dramatically better sounding broadcast, as can be heard in the meet livestream link above.

Content

Building upon bringing in the Web scoreboard mentioned in the last post, I wanted to see if we could bring in what was displayed on the Daktronics scoreboard for high school meets. As I mentioned earlier the scoreboard was out for a few meets, but when it came back a representative from Daktronics was at the meet and I politely cornered him to ask how we could do this. It turns out the scoreboard console generates a Web page with the image of what’s live on the scoreboard. We were able to take the URL of that Web page into a browser source so the entire scoreboard could be in its own scene, as shown here:

As well, I added a crop of the scoreboard and put it at the top of all scenes so the event, heat, event title and clock was always displayed on all scenes, as shown here:

Other content improvements included custom thumbnail images for each meet in YouTube. These were created using GIMP, open-source graphics software comparable to PhotoShop, then taking the image with the meet logo and text and setting it in YouTube Studio for the livestream. I also made a video of the school’s logo and animated text using Canva, a cloud-based, easy to use design platform. Although I only have the free version, I was impressed with how much I could do with it.

So What’s Next?

Where the list of improvements is not only long but game-changing for our livestreams, there still more I want to do. There are many features of OBS I have yet to play with, and if only I had the luxury of time to research and experiment more.

A hold-over from the last post was a pan-tilt-zoom, or PTZ, camera. An example of one is the Move 4K from PTZOptics. A challenge we have is the cameras would be mostly used outdoors or in high-humidity natatoriums. Surprisingly we have had little issues with our ~US$50 Webcams and can afford to have extras. But with prices starting at ten-times that of a standard Webcam, it’s outside of my own budget. To mitigate any issues with the environment, PTZOptics has partnered with a firm to make outdoor camera covers. These are nothing short of amazing, but carry a cost as much as a camera and would add significantly to our load and the logistics of how to mount them as it is huge. All that being said, recently learning about these makes them more within reach.

Deconstructing Livestreaming Improvements

My trajectory for our livestreaming efforts is to make a broadcast that I and others would enjoy watching. Where for years people have – and still do – say what they are looking at is good enough, it is because there is no other option for them. As is clearly stated in the text and pictures here, there’s a better way. With a small investment in time and equipment, a quality livestream experience can become a reality for all.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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