I love meetings. Honestly, I really do.

It’s like theater. Or movies: being in a room with a group of people, sharing a common reality, and figuring things out together. Those are the “good” meetings.

And the “bad” ones?  The boring ones. The tense ones. The ones where it feels as if something else is going on that no one is saying out loud — I particularly like those. I don’t play cards or board games, but meetings are my kind of puzzle. I find myself trying to figure out what’s really happening. 

I like them so much that I actually trained as a group psychologist and added it to my professional life, alongside filmmaking.

But there’s a problem.

I like live meetings. Being in the room. Seeing everything. Feeling everything.
Recorded meetings just don’t do it for me: they’re framed. Limited. You only see what someone else decided you should see.

So as a documentary filmmaker, I started asking:

Is there a way to bring people into the room—even if they’re not there?

This is my first attempt at the answer.

Below is a 360° video of a Town of Pine Plains Board meeting of March 19, 2026.

With a 360° video, you’re not just watching—you’re choosing.
You can pan and tilt around the room, follow whoever you want, and explore the space as if you were there.

In a sense, you’re creating your own documentary.  You are participating, opening a gateway to democracy. 

How to watch in 360

Once the video starts to play

  • On a computer: hold down the mouse and drag it across the screen
  • On a phone or tablet: drag your finger across the screen. For the best experience, hold the device in landscape (horizontal) mode

Play around with it.

You will be amazed by what you can now see!

Below, for comparison, is the same meeting, in the conventional format, as it appears on the Town of Pine Plains YouTube channel.
Here is a short version of the public meeting where the public is speaking.  It’s short, only 1:30 long, so you can experiment with the controls.  Pan, tilt, skip ahead, or repeat, and, for more bells and whistles, click on the closed captions or the transcript icons on the control bar.
PLAY AROUND WITH IT!