Crowdmics app avoids need for pass-the-microphone [BBC]

[Colin McDonald]

Crowdmics app avoids need for pass-the-microphone - BBC News

Ever been part of an audience and wanted to participate in a live event?

Your options were limited: either raise your hand and project as far as your voice allows; or patiently await a wireless microphone to relay its way through the crowd.

An enterprising start-up is looking to our smartphones to provide assistance.

Crowdmics is an app that lets users speak into their own microphone, with the sound broadcast over wi-fi to speakers in the room.

The company makes its money by charging event organisers a fee for the service.

It can also allow event attendees to take part in polls and submit comments to the presenter on stage.

The BBC's Richard Taylor was given a demo by company founder Tim Holladay.

While this app is clearly designed for conferences and similar events, I wonder if a more ENG-ish equivalent is possible, using smartphones instead of multiple radiomics or frantic booming? Would still need portable wifi to enable it.

And why stop at audio? Next - multicam on the cheap? The quality would be awful, but look at the number of dire vertical videos that end up on the news.

I've just had a nightmare vision of a future where there is a ENG 'crew' without camera or microphones, just one poor presenter doing it all using a smartphone app to select a succession of video selfies from eager and inept participants. 'OxPop' - Oculus Populi, a kind of video vox pop, is born.
Aaargh!