[asianexpress]

Thanks for the input! Any idea how much a local sound technician costs?

We were thinking we might just get mixers + mics (such as http://www.amazon.com/Audio-Technica-ATR2100-USB-Cardioid-Dy...), with the mixer able to plug in via USB (I personally have used this set up for recording my own music). This seems like the cheapest setup -- downside is the wired mics and the need to have people grab a mic, but we can mitigate this with a multiple mic setup -- 3 mics. One for the main speaker (if there is one), and then two to pass around as people talk back and forth, or ask questions.

In terms of the sound itself, we can just plug in some speakers to whatever machine that is in the Google Hangout.

As an added bonus: we have our own parts for a Karaoke machine