Meetings: Creating a Hangouts On Air Event
Google's Hangouts On Air are distinct from Hangouts in that they are streamed live via YouTube and made available there after the event.
You can (and should) create a Hangouts On Air "Event" at any time before a meeting is to take place. This gives you time to distribute a link to the YouTube broadcast as well as the private Hangout link for participants. There is a Google Plus "Event" page corresponding to the scheduled Hangouts On Air event but it's not particularly friendly so you are usually best to distribute links manually for the event.
Depending on the way the Hangout On Air is created, you can have either 10 or 15 people being recorded, and a (theoretically) unlimited number of people watching live via YouTube. The 15-person limit is available to organisations that are using Google Apps. Private Google accounts (gmail.com style) are limited to 10 participants.
1. Go to https://plus.google.com make sure you are logged in to the account you wish to create the event as, change by clicking on the avatar at the top right:
2. _(optional) If you wish to create the event under a "Page" account and are an administrator of that Page, you should be able to select it from the avatar dropdown once you have switched to the user account is that is an administrator of that page.
3. Switch to the Hangouts section
Click on the menu at the top left of Google Plus to reveal a long list of sections:
Select the Hangouts section:
4. Switch to Hangouts On Air
At the middle-top of the Hangouts page you can switch to "Hangouts On Air":
5. Start a new Hangout On Air
The "Start a Hangout On Air" doesn't immediately start one, don't be afraid to click it!
6. Name the Event
7. Schedule it for Later
This is the trick to make a Hangout start at a later date and appear on people's calendars, select "Later" in the creation window and select the time you want it to start as well as the duration. Note that this is in your local timezone but your meetings will generally be across timezones so get it right!
8. Add people to the meeting
You can add people to the meeting by putting their email addresses in the "Audience" box.
Note that the default audience is set by your organisation or the settings of the Page. In this case, the default is "Public" which is fine. Even for a non-public event, you can set the YouTube feed (later) to be visible by people with the link.
Everyone on this list will receive an invitation and the event will show up as a special item in their Google Calendar. The Google Calendar item will link straight to the new Event page that is created.
9. Setup and share links
With the event created, you can now edit its settings if you need changes, including changing the visibility of the event and adding additional audience to it.
10. Public, YouTube link
There are two types of links you need to care about. The YouTube feed links to youtube.com for public viewing and the Hangout link is to plus.google.com and is for participants in the Hangout. Confusion usually arises because the Event page displays both a standard YouTube play triangle-in-a-circle button as well as a "Start" button, these do different things.
To get the sharable YouTube feed link for the Event, click on "Links" and copy the "YouTube page" URL. This video will show a static image until the event has started.
11. Private, Hangout link
The easiest way to get the Hangout link ahead of the event to share with participants is to "Start" the hangout:
This loads the Hangout window, from there you can copy the URL from the URL bar:
Note that you will often have a user-specific query-string on the URL, when you copy and share the URL, remember to remove the cruft that won't be useful to others (usually starting with "authuser=X" when you are logged in to Google with >1 account).
12. Starting the Event
When you are ready to start the Hangout On Air at the appropriate time. Go back to the event page and "Start" the Hangout like you did when you grabbed the URL, but this time you can complete the process.
You can skip the initial dialog:
Then, as the creator, after a few seconds, the Hangout will do some "Loading" thing. Perhaps it contacts the NSA to say something interesting is being recorded and they should listen in.
After this reaches 100% you'll have a "Start Broadcast" button:
Note that if you don't get this 0% -> 100% loader and the "Start Broadcast" button you may need to close the window, double-check you are logged in as the right Google account and start again. Hangouts On Air has been known to be sketchy at getting the "Start Broadcast" button to the right user.
You will also likely have to herd cats to get people into the Hangout, share the URL again via whatever IM mechanism you have.
13. Broadcasting
The rest is self-explanatory. "Start Broadcast" starts broadcasting to YouTube, it may take a few seconds to actually get going but "On-Air" should light-up which means you are live (before that you have some private time that's not recorded or broadcast if you need to talk about people behind their backs or use naughty words). You'll then have a "Stop Broadcast" button to end the recording and live feed.