230 Chapter 17 CORPORATE EVENTS hold the mike or hand it to the participant. Alternately, the assistants could be equipped with wireless or wired shotgun mikes. In advance, ask them to sit or crouch to be unobtrusive. Ask the assistants to wear black so they don't draw attention to themselves on camera. Another technique is placing two or more microphones on stands at the foot of the aisles. The guests then walk to one of the microphones to ask their questions. One of the largest venues where this takes place is at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meet- ing of billionaire Warren Buffett fame. These shareholder meet- ings take place at the 20,000-seat Qwest Center in Omaha, Nebraska. About a dozen mikes are placed in the balconies and on the main floor, and each is illuminated with a spotlight. Feeding the Audio and Video to a Remote Site Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway meetings are so popular that the company sends remote feeds to adjacent rooms at the Qwest Center and to nearby hotels. The company uses closed- circuit AV cables within the building and microwave transmit- ters to beam the signal to the hotels. If your meeting will have fewer attendees than Berkshire's, you may need to simply run long audio and video cables from one room to the other. If you are running a video cable longer than 50 feet, rent or purchase a video amplifier or a video distri- bution amplifier to boost the signal. Audio sent through XLR cables as long as 400 feet usually does not need to be amplified. Microwave transmitter-receiver systems may also be rented. They are not the large dishes you see on TV trucks but are smal- ler systems not much larger than a camera. Mount them on tri- pods and send the signal via line-of-sight from the transmitter to the receiver. You'll need to secure the tripods with sandbags or some other stabilizing device to prevent them from acciden- tally getting misaligned during the transmission. Live Streaming of Meetings Here is an opportunity for the video producer and the com- pany's IT department to join forces to bring the immediacy of an important meeting or conference to the staff or shareholders who are not able to travel to attend. While you will probably