For your workshop, you'll be using the platform https://www.butter.us. We will provide you with access to the 99 Minute Workshop room that Ministry of Testing hosts and will have communicated upfront where learners can access your workshop.
If you haven't used Butter before, we recommend you spend a little time learning how it works before your first workshop. Whilst we've attempted to capture everything you need to know to deliver your workshop in the video above, we also recommend
Creating a free account with Butter and playing around with it's features: https://butter.us
Reviewing Butter's support documents: https://help.butter.us
If you've ever attended a Butter event you should have a good idea of how it works. All you will need to do is read this document to get you prepared for hosting your workshop.
Setting up and running your workshop
1 week before the workshop - Things to prepare before the event
There are a few things you will need to consider and do before you run your workshop. We advise you ensure these points have all been addressed a week before the event. This helps prevent any nasty surprises on the night.
So before you start you will need to:
Ensure that someone from Ministry of Testing has added you as a co-facilitator to the 99 Minute Workshop butter room
Make sure you have a strong internet connection and somewhere quiet to join. We don't want your hard work to be affected by you dropping out regularly or having the sound of a washing machine behind you drowning you out.
Butter can be demanding on a browser and only supports Chrome as your browser for the session.
Make sure you have a camera and a microphone ready and that you have tested them. Your microphone can be a headset or a built-in one. However, we find that headsets are best. If you do use a headset microphone, make sure that the mic is being picked up on the headset and NOT the computer - as it may be too quiet if the microphone is too far away.
If you are not familiar with Butter before or this is your first time, we strongly recommend that you watch through the video above to learn about it's features.
Once you've gone through this list and feel happy that each item has been addressed you'll be all ready for the big event.
30 minutes before your workshop - Join the butter room
No one can join the room until you have joined so we recommend you join early to get setup and allow people access. If you have been added as a Co-facilitator you should be able to simply head to the URL provided by us.
Ending your workshop - Ending your broadcast
Congratulations, you're all done! Now to wrap up the session you need to do one final thing. Click the red 'End broadcast' button in the top right-hand corner to finish the session. This will stop your webcam and audio and inform the attendees that the session is finished. Then go put your feet up and congratulate yourself on a job well done!
Troubleshooting issues
Butter is no different to other tools and it will cause issues at times. You are more than likely going to have individuals who are having issues that are occurring on their end of the broadcast. For these issues, kindly inform them to refresh (usually a couple of mentions of refreshing is enough before participants start supporting one another)
If, however, a large group of participants are reporting issues, we've provided this list of solutions to common problems. Whilst not necessarily live on Butter, there will also be a member of Ministry of Testing on hand to support you if you do run into any major issues.
Participants are complaining your video quality is poor
Butter can be quite hungry at times so consider turning off any non-essential tabs or applications such as Slack. This can sometimes help improve video quality.
Sometimes refreshing the page can help improve the quality as well (don't worry you'll be shown as live again once the refresh is done)
Participants are complaining your sound quality is poor
Depending on what you're presenting consider turning off either your screen sharing or your webcam to improve your bandwidth.
You accidentally drop off during the session
Stay calm and refresh the page. Butter will handle you going live again after a refresh.
If you drop off and cannot get back at all. For example, you have a power cut, please inform a member of Ministry of Testing at once so we can jump on and support the attendees.
Participants are complaining there is an echo on the line when you speak
This may be down to a few reasons:
Check you don't have any other Butter tabs open that are causing a feedback loop
Your microphone is picking up your speakers. Move slightly back from the speakers to ensure audio isn't picked up
Chat isn't populating
If it appears no one is sending messages on the chat, it may have frozen. Refresh the page.
You're going to be late or have to cancel at the last minute
If for any reason there is a delay or a cancellation please inform a member of Ministry of Testing at once so we can jump on and support the