Your Technology Committee has been very busy this summer to enhance UUFP’s capabilities to better serve you during these difficult times. Here are some of the projects we have been working on to help UUFP remain
a vibrant and vital part of your spiritual lives.
Upgraded Wifi
The Wifi signal in the Fellowship has been spotty at best over the years. We have made some changes to improve that. New WiFi routers have been installed around the building to insure that, wherever you go, you have
a strong signal. This was a necessary change now to support Livestreaming of services from the Sanctuary. Going forward, it will help enable better programming in the Social Hall, RE and Library, and in addition, improve
building security.
Zoom Meetings and Services
With the recommendation and assistance of the UUA, we have created a Zoom account for the Fellowship. We have been using this account all summer to meet for Virtual Coffee Hour on Sundays, Vespers Services on
Wednesday evenings, Committee & Board meetings and starting in September, Sunday Services.
UUFP YouTube Channel
During the times of COVID, it is not possible for us to gather together, as we would most certainly prefer to do. In an effort to stay in touch with as many of us as possible, we have started recording and streaming our services. Many of our services from this past summer are available on YouTube. The content here will only grow as we continue to upload our services to make them available for later viewing. In the near future, you will be able to go here to join our virtual service live through a process called LiveStreaming.
Here is the address to the UUFP YouTube Channel, or you can search YouTube for Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Pottstown. Please Note: there are other congregations who use the initials UUFP, so searching
for only “UUFP” may bring up other congregations.
LiveStreaming of Services
We have been working for the last month or so to build the capability for the Fellowship to “LiveStream” our services. This means that we are recording and broadcasting the service in a way that you can join the experience as it is happening. Currently, we are using Zoom software to
do this. In the near future, we will be switching over to YouTube. Zoom is a fantastic platform for meetings and face-to-face communication, but for video quality and music it is has significant drawbacks. LiveStreaming on
YouTube will allow us to provide a much higher quality service, with beautiful music to engage the mind and enrich the spirit.
The instructions for joining the LiveStream on YouTube will be forth coming as we get closer to rolling out the capability.
Virtual Presenters
The main reason we have not started LiveStreaming on YouTube is that we have one final technical challenge to overcome. We need to provide the capability for presenters that are not located in the Fellowship during the
service. We need to be able to bring these presenters into the Service in such a way that both people present in the Sanctuary and on the livestream can see and hear the presentations. We have some ideas how to make this
work, but we are still working to find the right solution to the problem.
This capability will open up a new world of programming to the Fellowship. We will no longer be limited by geography and will be able to provide presentations from all over the country, or even the world. We are very excited about the prospects and really look forward to making
this a reality.